Genesis 8:20-9:17 He Who Makes Promises

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsek.

If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

God’s Promises Beyond Health, Wealth, and Success

One of the exciting things is that we get to reflect this morning on a God who makes promises to humanity. That's really the point of the text that we're looking at in Genesis. The reality is, God doesn't promise us, he doesn't promise to give us enough money to build a building.

He doesn't promise that we will always be healthy and wealthy, or that all of our plans will succeed. Is that reality in your life? I mean, have you experienced that, that God's promises don't extend to you always being extremely rich?

Is that right? Or that every plan that you set forward is going to succeed? Is that what he promises to us in scripture?

No.

But what God does promise is very significant. He promises to us that he is good and will remain good. That he actually is for us and not against us, for his people and not against his people. He promised to Eve, after the eating of that fruit that was forbidden, he promised to her that he would send one of her offspring to fix the mess that humanity has made.

That he would repair the rebellion that we have brought against him. And in our text we're going to see that we serve a God who promises to never blot out humanity again like he did in the flood that we saw last week.

We will see that he's well acquainted with our sinful hearts. He knows us inside and out. How many of you, maybe you don't want to raise your hand, but you acknowledge that you have a sinful heart? Some of you are even willing to raise your hands on that one.

We do.

Our hearts are sinful. And he knows us. He knows us inside and out. And he's a God who knows we're sinful. And he still makes promises to be patient with us. How many of you are grateful for the patience of God?

I've lived 40 years under the patience of God. Every breath that I take is a demonstration of his patience and endurance with me. And I'm grateful for that. So I want you to open your Bibles, please, to Genesis chapter 8.

We're going to start in Genesis 8 .20 and go all the way through 9 chapter 17. If you open the Bible in the seat back in front of you, you can turn to page 6 and boom, it's right there. If you don't own a Bible or don't own an English Standard Version of the Bible, which is the one that I just prefer to preach from, you can take that one home with you.

We want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God. Follow along as I read Genesis 8 .20 through chapter 9 verse 17. Read it in its entirety. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man. 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.

While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. 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 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. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you.

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, 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.

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. I have set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the.

Earth.

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, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant that I've established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.

Let's pray.

Father, I rejoice in the opportunity that we have to come together and hear from your word a chance as the band comes to lead us in singing to lift our voices and our songs before you. I ask that you would accept these songs as an offering up to you, Father, that it would be pleasing to you, that it would be like a pleasing aroma before your throne, that it would be our hearts that are genuinely engaged in who you are.

Father, you are a God who makes promises, who has demonstrated patience and long-suffering and endurance as a father who loves his creation and is working to bring about restoration and reconciliation and wholeness and completeness.

Father, I look forward to just even the chance to dig into this text once again and talk through the implications of covenant and sacrifice and how those Old Testament forms couldn't accomplish for us what has now been accomplished for us in Jesus Christ, your son.

And so, Father, I pray that we would lift our voices up as a people who are saved because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and I ask this in his name, amen. I always count it a privilege to get a chance to get up and preach right after that song because that's exactly what we're about to do, is to hear from God, from his word, and give room for his spirit in our lives.

And so that's my prayer every Sunday morning, is that God would meet us where we're at. Now, you've had all different kinds of things going on in your week and all different kinds of things and hassles and frustrations.

Some of you had a great week, some of you had a really down week. But the reality is the spirit of God can come and meet us right here, right now, each of us as individuals, and transform us and change us by the hearing of his word, and so that's what's encouraging to me.

And I do want you to have your Bibles open. I think that that's beneficial for you, that you can actually walk through the text with me because that's what I'm going to do this morning. So if you would make sure that you're open to Genesis chapter 8.

Remember that any time, I know we just took a break, but if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice, you can feel free to do that, restrooms are back here if you need those at any time. Let me kind of summarize kind of where we've been so far in the book of Genesis.

We're marching through this book, I'm taking it a week at a time and a section at a time. And so we've seen God create in the first couple of chapters and then we saw Adam and Eve sin and rebel against God.

The world was plunged into corruption over the course of several generations, several long generations that we saw. God looked down on the intensity of the corruption and we saw a couple weeks ago that he actually said this, that he saw that every intention of the thoughts of the heart of mankind were only evil continually.

Pretty strong statement, right? Continually, everything in our hearts, the intentions of our heart, the intentions of the thoughts of our heart, wicked only ever continually. And so he raised up a preacher to proclaim righteousness and repentance and ultimately he told that preacher, Noah, that judgment was coming and he said 120 years I'm going to be patient with people and then comes a judgment, so build a boat.

Noah obeyed and built the boat. And God we saw out of grief, not out of anger, not out of wrath, not out of spite, not out of vindictiveness, but out of grief in his heart, we saw last week that God blotted out humanity from the face of the planet with a global flood.

Only eight people who had trusted him, Noah and his family, passed through that calamity along with some animals in the ark. And last week we ended with Noah and family and animals all stepping out onto dry ground.

Put yourself in their shoes. Sometimes I think it's very helpful for us to have a bit of an imagination when we think through these things. But what would be the first thing that you would do, what would be your first act after spending a year seasick in a manure strewn floating barn, get to step out of that barn, what would be your first act?

How many of you maybe kiss the ground would be up on the high end of the list of things that you might do. Worship God, give thanks. Now, did any of you a few weeks ago follow the news story of that cruise ship down in the Caribbean that was out of power and have any of you in here ever been on a cruise before?

Pretty opulent, pretty nice, pretty extravagant. Some of you maybe are saving money to go on a cruise, it's kind of a neat thing. Can you imagine the turnaround on that? The bathrooms aren't working, the ovens aren't working, no lights, nothing.

That would turn into a pretty bad cruise pretty quick. And they were only without power down in that boat for a few days, right? Was it five, four or five days? Can you imagine what those people were like when they finally tugged them into Mobile, Alabama and they actually got off that boat on the dock?

I bet there was a lot of rejoicing. We're free, we're safe, we're back home. Well, what we see here, the first act of Noah is to build an altar and offer some sacrifices. What that demonstrates to us is that the knowledge of sacrifice was pretty well developed by Noah's time.

We saw Cain and Abel actually already make sacrifices centuries before this account. So that there was already a concept, a mindset of sacrifice to God that was developing is very clear. Now, how that developed, we don't get from the book of Genesis.

It doesn't tell us how they understood the sacrificial system. We see mentioned that he offers some of the clean animals and some of every clean bird. Obviously God had somehow delineated those things out to them that you don't sacrifice geckos on the altar, you sacrifice lambs on the altar.

They were clean and unclean animals. And so that's what's going on here. I want to point out that there's a multitude of different reasons given in the Old Testament for sacrifice, aren't there? Any of you reading through the Bible in a year?

Maybe a couple of you. Have you gotten to Leviticus yet? You get through Leviticus and bravo for those of you who got through Leviticus, I mean kudos to you. That's awesome. If you want a little bit of light reading this next week, go ahead and take off the chunk of the first nine-ish chapters of the book of Leviticus where it spells out all of the sacrifices in depth.

That's light reading for you. That was meant to be funny, but apparently you guys don't see this.

What?

No, it's not super light reading. But that's where you find all of these sacrifices that are mentioned in the book. There's all different kinds of reasons given there. The word that's used in the text here is a whole burnt offering, which has some notion of atonement to it, has some notion of the offerer recognizing their sin before God and saying I want my sin washed away, I want it cleansed.

So there's some of that notion in here, but I think there's probably three distinct reasons why Noah might offer a sacrifice in this situation. One would be to give thanks. Would you agree with me on that?

There's a sacrifice of thanks, an offering saying thank you for deliverance, thank you for carrying us through this calamity, thank you for saving us. The second is atonement for sins, as I already mentioned.

And the last would be, there would be an element of consecration. That's not probably a word you used this last week, right, consecration? Consecration being a setting apart of you for the further service of God in your life.

And I think that there was a sense of that for the future of saying this is a fresh start for us as a race and we are going to start it on the right foot with gratitude to God, with thankfulness and with a moving forward in the grace of God.

Now nobody here brought an animal this morning, right? You didn't bring an animal to sacrifice? I just want to make sure that what I say next is accurate. I'm grateful that you didn't bring an animal to sacrifice this morning.

I'm glad that I'm a pastor and not a priest under the old covenant. Now that the entire sacrificial system ultimately has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, we find that our gratitude and thankfulness, like that element that was in Noah's sacrifice, we find that our gratitude and thankfulness is now focused on the cross, right?

It's no longer on bringing a lamb to slaughter, no longer bringing oxen, no longer bringing birds to sacrifice. We find that that gratitude is focused on the cross. Our atonement, that is the covering of sins, flows out of the cross and our consecration, that is setting us aside for the work of God for the future, is brought about by the cross of Jesus Christ.

And in the Old Testament, sacrifices were an act of worship. To bring a sacrifice was to worship God. But now in the New Covenant, there is one sacrifice that is the source of all worship. There's one sacrifice now.

And I think if we reflect on the Old Covenant, we reflect on the Old Testament, and we are encountering really here sacrifices for the second time, because we talked about it just briefly with Cain and Abel, but then it's going to be well-formed throughout Leviticus.

How many of you have read the Old Testament and have to know that there's a little bit about sacrifices in there? A lot of sacrifices mentioned in the Old Testament. And what I fear might be our tendency is looking backwards on the sacrifices that we see in the Old Testament.

We encounter one, and we go, the logical conclusion to that, what many preachers might be tempted to say, what I could even be tempted to say now, is okay, now folks, recast, what are you sacrificing for God?

What are you giving to Him? What are you sacrificing? As if that's the reason that the Old Testament model of sacrifice was set up, so that we might be moved to sacrifice, and that's the end of it. And that misses the understanding of why the sacrificial system exists in the Old Testament.

It is not that you should walk away here feeling guilty that I ought to give more to God, that boy, what God demands of me is a sacrifice. No, the point of the Old Testament system is that sacrifices never accomplish the redemption, the fixing of the problem of the human heart.

There's sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice, and it never accomplishes what it set out to do with intention, it's purposeful, are you getting what I'm saying? So if you walk away from this service and you go, well, what, you know, we talk about sacrifices, I ought to give something to God, well, I mean, we'll get there here in a minute, but ultimately it comes down to recognition that God has now provided the perfect sacrifice.

For you and me.

He has done it. Not what can you do to get closer to God, He has brought you near through His Son, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, done, He did it for you and me. That the logical conclusion of this is not what are you going to sacrifice for God, He has done it, He has solved the problem of the human heart.

With that Old Covenant, and that's going to be the theme of this message, is the way that these Old Covenant promises are band-aids, they are definitely God-ordained and they are good things, but in the end they do not accomplish what Jesus Christ, everything in the Old Testament, pointing forward to a Messiah, a Savior who would come to deliver us from our sins.

All this Old Testament stuff that couldn't accomplish our heart issue, could not fix our heart issue. We see that the Old Testament sacrifices, however, did have an impact on God and I think in order for them to illustrate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, they did need to have an impact on Him in some way.

And so the implication in this text is that God saw the offering of Noah, the pleasing aroma, it says in verse 21, and the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man. So there's a movement in God because of this.

And I mean, we have to ask ourselves some questions then. How do we know that God accepts sacrifice at all? Because in the Old Testament He does. And that's the way that we make sense of the brutal death of the cross.

Here in the text we see that sacrifice does move God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrifice that moved Him. I don't think it's the death of the animal that He delights in. I don't think it's the shedding of the blood that makes Him excited.

That's a pagan notion. A real pagan thought is that God needs, I mean, ultimately at the most crass level, sacrifice is God's hungry and He needs some food, right? Isn't that the ultimate pagan notion of sacrifice?

If you get into ancient history and things like that, certainly tribes and people who have thought that way down through the ages were going to give God some food. He's hungry. But God doesn't have nostrils to smell.

And I believe that the smell of a barbecue in this text is a metaphor. It's an image. We're going to see that all throughout Scripture that there's this image or this notion. So that when it says, and when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, what is the aroma that He's smelling?

Now, do any of you ever smell something and it just keys you into something in the history of the past? I love the seasons in the state of Michigan. Any of you really enjoy that first time you smell burning leaves in the fall?

It just takes you places and it's cool and it's like, okay, fall is here, the leaves are changing. Aren't there certain smells that you expect as a passage of time? I'm really looking forward to it. I know that this is probably going to happen just in the next few weeks.

There's going to be a warm day. I'm going to get in my car right out here. I'm going to pull out and I'm going to drive just right over there, just behind here. And on the way, I'm going to have the window rolled down and you know what I'm going to smell?

Somebody is barbecuing. And it's like the sign of spring. Spring is happening. Somebody actually fired up the grill and the barbecue is going, it'll probably be Pete. It's my neighbor. But somebody is going to be barbecuing and I love those smells, right?

I mean, isn't there something like, I'm from Michigan, I grew up here, I love this place, but even that sense like when it's a single digit, middle of the winter, and you step out and your nostrils freeze.

You know what I'm talking about? None of you like that. This time of the year may not be the best time to use that as an illustration. We're ready for the barbecue smells, right? But I want to point out that I think that the smell of barbecue is a metaphor we can relate to, right?

It's something that's like a pleasing thing.

It's a good thing.

But I don't think that's the main point. Many acts of service throughout scripture result in the metaphor of a sweet aroma rising to God that had nothing to do with burning meat. Think about this. The prayers of Christians in the book of Revelation are pictured as a delightful incense rising up to our God.

Does he have nostrils? Is he smelling our prayers? You get what I'm saying? It's a picture. It's a word picture of what's going on here. It's not like he's smelling your breath when you pray or something like that.

It might not be such a sweet aroma after all. Our praises are said, like when we just sang, if our hearts are engaged with God and we're thinking about him accurately and we're praising him, then those are pictured in the Psalms again as an aroma, a sweet savor that rises up to God before his throne.

And he was there listening to us sing, going, I delight in this. I rejoice in this. I'm excited. They trust me. They believe me. They really do understand me and they're getting me. They're learning and they're committed and they're here.

I do not think it's the death of animals that he is excited about. It is that God delights in the heart of the one offering the sacrifice. Noah is thankful. Noah is penitent. Noah is trusting in God. And therefore the aroma is not the cooking of meat.

The aroma is a heart devoted to him. That is what God delights in. So it's not the skill of the singer. It's not the quantity of offering. It's not the eloquence of the prayer, but it is the heart given to God that is the aroma.

Before him.

Does that make sense? And that is what's going on in this text here as Noah makes a sacrifice. And therefore God declares, looking down, he sees the heart of Noah and this whole sacrifice that's happened and this is post-flood and they've just stepped out on dry land and he's built an altar.

His first act is to worship. And God declares to himself, it says in himself, he's speaking to himself and he says he would not further curse the ground again. Ultimately God is kind of like, I love these people.

I love them. He doesn't repeal the current curse, but he says he is not going to ever strike down all living creatures on the earth again. In verse 22, he promises to keep the seasonal cycles running.

He promises that planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer, winter, day and night. He is the one sustaining the cycles of this planet. Do you realize that? He's keeping this thing rolling. And as long as there is an earth, these things will continue, the text says.

And I want to point something out about the phrase in verse 22, while the earth remains, I lean towards the belief that the earth will remain. There is going to be a coming final spiritual judgment of this place.

But I believe that this pledge is a solid promise that God is not going to destroy life from this world again in this way, like he snuffed out everything except for the ape. I believe that the new earth we live on one day will be this very earth, this place, purged and cleansed of sin, washed of the effects of the fall.

So when God says here he will not do this again, I believe him. I take it at face value. I think he genuinely will not destroy this world again. And although some have limited this merely to another flood, and we're going to go on here in a second to chapter nine, and in chapter nine there's indication that certainly he's not going to flood it again.

I think the promise rings kind of hollow if it's something like this. God says, you know what? I promise I'll never destroy the world again. But you got the whole apocalyptic fire from heaven. You've got all different kinds of ways that God could destroy the world.

But don't worry folks, it won't be water. Does that give you assurance? Does that give you some kind of sense of God's care and concern and it won't flood you again? But it might be a meteor strike, it might be nuclear holocaust, it might be, you know,.

We don't know.

But it's not going to be water. Do you see how that kind of rings empty if that's the case? I'm actually making a case that I believe that this world will exist and will be the new earth that we live on into the future.

It will receive some pretty heavy renovations. As a matter of fact, the book of Revelation talks about some pretty significant revelations, I mean remodeling that's going to happen. But even in that devastation, he will never again wipe out all living things from the face of the planet.

He's going to keep it going. And that demonstrates his commitment and his love for us. But notice the phrase in the middle of verse 21, and this is kind of key. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because a man for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

The word youth there can be translated infancy or it can also be translated as a figure of speech from the beginning. In essence, he's saying, I've known that you are wicked all the way from childhood up.

Anybody kind of believe that that's true? Like, do I need to convince you of that or is that reality in your own heart? Have you faced that in yourself to actually see that there is that reality about you?

I mean, have you made that personal and recognized your own sinfulness? So I think that's the first step to healing is recognizing that there is something significantly wrong in my heart, not just in my behavior, but it's a root in here that keeps cropping out in various avenues in various ways.

But there is a wickedness in my heart, right? There's a problem in here that keeps showing up in my behavior out here. And it's not just this that's the problem, but it's this that is the problem. And so he recognizes and identifies.

God takes it straight on, an honest assessment, ultimately, that the flood has not taken care of the part of the human problem. What did God say was true of the human heart prior to the flood? Everything, every thought and intention of their heart wicked only ever continually.

And now what's he saying after the flood? Has the flood solved the problem? Okay, now they're okay. Now these eight people, I've saved humanity by bringing about a blameless man, Noah. He's righteous.

He's all good and everything's all good and hunky-dory. It's all taken care of. Is that what he says?

It's still the case.

Has the flood solved the problem? I think the flood has served to slow us in our progress towards sin. It's kind of been like a hurdle in the way of our sinful behavior because now there's only eight people sinning on the face of the planet, so a little bit slower, but they'll get back up to speed.

So don't worry about that. They'll get it going again, okay? But it slowed the progress, and I think it does also demonstrate how evil and wicked that must have been during that age and that generation for him to have to just hit the reset button.

The flood reset things, but it does not solve the human condition, and nothing in the old covenant could quite solve the problem. Not the flood, not the sacrifices of sheep and goats, not the building of a temple, not the establishment of a code of conduct through the law of Moses, none of those things could solve the problem.

As a matter of fact, one could say the Old Testament is like one long story of the things that don't work in trying to fix the human heart. It's a big case study for us. I love the Old Testament because I dig in there and I see a lot of my own behaviors and a lot of myself in there, but equally I also see a lot of the attempts that I have made to try to bridge the gap between me and God.

It's in there.

Sacrifice? I've tried it.

You know, give up things for God and he'll love you more. Can you see yourself in the kinds of things that they did? Follow more laws, obey more rules, do more good, do more of this, do more of that, because then God will like you.

That's what the Old Testament is all about, is just one huge demonstration of human attempt, humans working to try to please God, when all he's saying is all of this stuff points to your inability, I'm sending a savior.

Send one to take care of it, because you can't remedy the problem yourself. You see, in reality, when I read the Old Testament, I read it from a different lens, and I understand it, that ultimately every single story whispers the name of Jesus.

You ever thought about that? Every story gives a sense of, there's a messiah, there's one who is going to take care of this.

Mess.

Even the promise, the very first promise of God to Eve, an offspring of the woman, he will crush the head of the serpent.

Promise.

You hear the whisper of Jesus in that promise? All throughout, and I fear that sometimes in understanding or studying, some of us are scared of the Old Testament, because we don't quite know what to do with it, we don't quite know how it fits into the big picture, or we primarily teach it as like moral lessons to our children, right?

It's good, kids need to get the whole David and Goliath thing, right? We need to get David and Goliath. And David and Goliath, by the way, just an illustration of how we get that one wrong, David and Goliath isn't about you going out and slaying your giants, it's about God doing it for you.

How many stones did David pick out of that river? What did he know was going to happen? He's just trying to be faithful, trying to do what God, who slayed the giant? God did. You hear how we get that wrong?

It's like, oh, the illustration of David and Goliath, what's your giant you need to slay.

This week?

God has slayed the giant for you. He is working on your behalf to bring about your salvation. The glorious thing, grace is amazing, so undeserved, but so real. Jesus Christ is the solution to the issue of our corrupt hearts, not sacrifices, not.

The flood.

It amazes me here that God, in verse 21, knows the nature of our hearts, knows what we're made of, knows that we're sinful and wicked from our youth up, and he still promises to never do this again. He's gracious, he's compassionate, he loves us, even in our brokenness, and he loves us so much that he's been working for centuries to bring about his ultimate plan of redemption.

And that plan of redemption is not another flood, it is punishment, but it's not another flood, it is the cross, and punishment meted out on his son on our behalf. That is where he takes out the punishment that you and I deserve, but he takes it on himself.

God Restarts Humanity and Reorders Creation

In chapter 9, God restarts with Noah, and he issues the same command he gave to Adam.

And Eve.

He says, there's only eight people left on the face of the planet, get busy, be fruitful and multiply, go at it. But things have changed after the flood, and God switches up a couple of things, so things are not quite the same that they were before the flood, which calls into question what were things really like before the flood, because we're going to see a difference in the shift of the relationship between animals and humanity here that's kind of intriguing.

In verses 2 -4, humans are for the first time given permission to eat meat, so we know that the society prior to the flood was a vegetarian society. The clear implication of verse 2 is that prior to the flood, animals did not have a healthy fear of humanity.

Is that kind of intriguing to you? What was life like on a planet where animals really didn't fear humanity that much? Well, how many of you know that if you eat animals, they're probably going to fear you?

Right?

How many of you have ever noticed, like, okay, we went down on vacation, we did a huge trip out west, we came back through Mammoth Cave, have any of you ever been to Mammoth Cave? Mammoth Cave sits on a huge park grounds with roads running through it and stuff, and you have to be really careful driving there because deer will walk right up to your car, and I mean, they'll poke their head in your door trying to get food from you.

Okay, is that normal behavior for deer during hunting season around here? There's a pretty healthy fear that deer have of humanity during hunting season, but even in Michigan, there are places where the deer know that they're pretty well protected and they're kind of more tame than other places, right, because they're not as fearful of hunting.

I think that that's part of what's going on here is that when you eat delicious critters, they're afraid of you. That's reality. And at this point in the text, there are no kosher laws, so that's coming later.

We're in the book of Exodus where God brings down His law on Mount Sinai and the people of Israel are told not to eat certain foods and things like that, and so really what we have here is, I mean, you can see it in the text, all food is available to Noah and family.

They're eating shellfish, they're eating, are you ready for this? I think we should take a moment of silence because do you know what's going on here? Bacon is going on here. We are seeing in our text the origin of bacon.