Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some from 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. Increase greatly 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 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 a 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 waters 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 have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. So, we made it through the flood, you guys. We joined Noah this morning on terra firma, on solid ground, one full year after the flood began, more or less. Now, I wonder if you had been cooped up on this boat for one full year, what would you do when you disembarked? What would be your first item of business? I imagine the temptation would be strong to kiss the dirt. Perhaps looking for a hot meal or a warm bath or a change of clothes would be in order. Of course, it's also true that there was no place for Noah to go. There was nobody for him to see, no one for him to do business with, All the people and places that he had known were no more. They'd been washed away. And in a very real sense, Noah was starting over from scratch. If he wanted a hot meal, he'd have to make it. In a matter of time, all the remaining foodstuffs that they had stored on the ark would be spin up. And he'd have to start growing his own food. or hunting animals, which gets to where we're going. If he wanted a change of clothes, well, maybe he had an extra set that just needed to be washed real good. But if he wanted new clothes, well, he'd have to fleece a sheep or he'd have to grow a crop of cotton or linen. and then pick it and spin that into yarns, and then turn the yarns into cloth, and then cut the cloth into clothes. Yep, no one in his family had the prospect of starting completely over from scratch, to rebuild civilization entirely. They had a house to build. Crops to plant, work to do. Now they could use a lot of the wood and resources that were on the ark, whatever supplies they had remaining, but there was nobody else to do the work but them. Rebuilding your life from the ground up takes a lot of effort. And some of you know exactly what that entails. But before Noah does any of that, Looking at this massive agenda of stuff that he has to do, if he had reminders on the iPhone or Todoist on his computer, he'd be several pages deep in things that needed to get done. But at the top of his agenda, the first thing he does before he builds anything for himself is he builds an altar. Noah's first deliberate act upon leaving the ark is to worship God. And it is that one act of worship that leads into everything else that we see in this story today. We'll explore the text under the following headings. First, God responds to worship. Second, He reiterates the creation mandate. Third, He revises the judicial system. And fourth, He resolves to preserve life. So first, God responds to worship. Verse 21 tells us, 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. What is it that leads God to utter this commitment to never again destroy the world with a flood? It is Noah's worship. Noah builds an altar, gathering stones and consecrating a space for the worship of God, and then Noah takes from every clean animal that was with him on the ark, and he offers them as whole burnt offerings to God in worship. Now, the whole burnt offering was different from the sin offering. This was not an offering that Noah made to try to appease God's wrath. This was not a propitiation. This was not an apology from God to Noah for something. He wasn't repenting from anything. Rather, Noah was demonstrated wholehearted thanksgiving to God for bringing him and his family safely through the flood. It was a gesture of complete dependence on God and a consecration of himself and everything he had to the Lord. What is more, by this sacrificial worship, Noah is offering both himself and his whole world. in worship to God. Kent Hughes writes, Noah was indicating, in effect, all my life is yours. Everything. You see, in the whole burnt offering, the worshiper took nothing for himself. It was all given to God. Most sacrifices, the worshiper would participate in by eating some meat, or some grain, or some wine, or something that was being offered that the worshiper would benefit from. Not so here. It's given entirely to God. And then in response to this worship, God quote unquote smells the pleasing aroma of this sacrifice. Now what's going on here? Does God enjoy the smell of a good barbecue just like the rest of us? Maybe. But it's definitely more than that. Obviously God is a spirit who does not have a body. He does not have a sense of smell like ours. Likewise, God does not have a belly, and He does not get hungry. He's not like the Mesopotamian gods who were said to swarm around the sacrifice like flies after the flood. Rather, this is both a metaphorical and a technical description of God's response to a proper sacrifice. When a sacrifice is pleasing to God, when worship honors Him, He smells it. That is, He receives it with pleasure. It's not a stench to Him. It's something He enjoys. is judged as holy and acceptable to God worship. Thus, it is in response to Noah's wholehearted, holy, acceptable worship that God makes this commitment that we see in verses 21 and 22, and that opens the door to all the words of God's blessing that are to follow, including a covenant. This is important to see. This passage reveals that there is a real and vital connection between our manner of worship and God's communication of grace to us. Understand, Noah wasn't trying to bargain with God. He wasn't treating God as a vending machine. I give you worship, you give me, you know, a honey bun. No, he wasn't trying to offer things to God so that God would bless him in return. He wasn't trying to prove his worth to God or his sincerity so that God would look on him favorably. That's not what Noah was doing. No, Noah was offering himself wholeheartedly to God, no strings attached. In this worship, the worship that pleased God, Noah offered himself to God wholeheartedly, no strings attached. And because that's what Noah was doing in worship, God gave himself to Noah, no strings attached. Because Noah gave himself to God, no strings attached. God gave himself and his promises to Noah, no strings attached. Mark and learn. Second, God reiterates the creation mandate. Chapter nine opens with words that should be very familiar to you all by this point, especially if you've been reading through our Bible plan this year. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. This is the reiteration of the creation mandate in Genesis 128. There God said to Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and exercise dominion over the creatures. Just as last week, we saw with the flood and its reversal, a decreation of the earth and a recreation of the earth, recapitulating days two, five, and six of the creation week. So here we find a recommissioning of Noah as Adam, as a second Adam. Noah's family is now the representative image of God on earth. Noah's family is blessed by God to continue functioning as God's image bearers in this world. As Richard Belcher notes, Noah should be seen as a second Adam who is given the original mandate that was given to Adam, but with the recognition that it must now be carried out in a fallen world. That brings us to an important difference between the original creation mandate and the one we find in Genesis 9. In his recommissioning of Noah in Adam's place, God explicitly notes a big difference as it relates to the animal kingdom. Whereas God blessed Adam with, quote, dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth, to Noah he says, quote, 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. The meaning of this statement is then explained with the words, 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. What's going on here is this. There's an important change taking place between the natural relationship of mankind and the animal kingdom. No longer is mankind's dominion over the animal world an easy one, a close proximity one. Prior to the flood, it seems the animals got along with mankind. They were all more or less tame. They were not skittish. But now, whether it's because of man's violence to the animals before the flood, or all the time that the animals spent in way too close proximity with mankind on the ark, The animals now become feral. They will be skittish. They will be like deer and rabbits, easily spooked. They will be defensive against man and territorial. They will not view man as a loving Lord, but as a deadly tyrant. This fear is likewise distinctly related to the grant of permission that every living animal is now fair game for man's diet. God is basically saying it's open season. There are no restrictions on man's diet in that regard. Now, it could very well be that God is giving Noah permission for the very first time in history to eat animals. However, I believe that the very inclusion on the ark before this time, the very inclusion of an idea that there are clean and unclean animals tells us that Noah already lived under a dietary restriction. This is not just a ceremonial distinction, it's a dietary distinction between animals that are safe to eat and animals that are not great to eat. The reason Noah brought more of the clean animals with him on the ark is in all likelihood because he was going to be eating on those ones. That's the best way to read these verses is to understand them as the removal of the clean, unclean distinction that existed before the flood, or at least in the time that Noah was on the ark. Meredith Klein paraphrases verse three to say, I give you permission to eat all kinds of meat again, without clean and unclean distinctions, just as it has always been permissible to eat all kinds of green plants without distinction. Indeed, the emphasis in verses two through four is not the emphasis of a new permission that was not given before, Rather, it's the emphasis on a widespread permission to eat everything. The word everything, the word every, is repeated throughout. However, within this widened permission to eat animals, God places a single limitation, just as He did in the garden. I give you abundantly every tree to eat except So we have here, I give you every animal to eat except you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood. So this is the one exception. The life of an animal, represented by its blood, belongs to God. And so it is not to be consumed. Rather, it is to be poured out before God. Pouring out an animal's blood on the ground represents an offering to God as the source of the animal's life. a very physical way of saying grace before a meal. Thank you for the life of this animal. I give its life back to you. And it's important to note that in the New Testament, We also have a transition from a period of time where God's people are required to eat clean and unclean, clean animals and not unclean animals. And then after a great work of redemption, God opens up all animals to man's diet. And it's very interesting that after that transition takes place, this commandment concerning blood once more appears. In Acts 10, we have God's revelation to Peter. on the blanket that all kinds of animals are now clean and good to eat. And Peter says, I've never eaten anything unclean. He says, no, I'm giving it to you. Don't declare unclean what I declare clean. And then in Acts 15 at the Jerusalem council, when they're weighing, when the Jewish church, the mother church are weighing the difficulties of blending together Jewish congregations and culture with Gentile congregations and culture, what do they say? The Jerusalem Council lays this obligation upon the Gentile church. It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements, that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled, the animal's been killed, but the blood's still in it, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Now, what does this mean for us? Well, you can enjoy eating your meat. God approves of a carnivorous diet. Being a vegetarian or being vegan is not inherently more spiritual, or more respectful of nature. If God says you can eat freely of something, you can eat freely of something. And don't let anybody else bind your conscience. Furthermore, don't worry. This does not mean you can't eat your steak rare. That's not what it means to not have blood in it. It means that animals, when they are slaughtered, must have their blood drained. And you shouldn't go around drinking pig's blood, or deer blood, or cow blood, like that's barbaric. We could debate whether this passage applies to New Testament Christians. I tend to think it does. And basically, it means we should not be barbarians. There are things that even as Christians, we should still distinguish ourselves from the godless pagans in the world around us. We shouldn't be cannibals. We also should refrain from blood. That's something easy, I think, we can do. That brings us to the third point, God revises the judicial system. God's introduction of the topic of blood immediately leads into the consideration of human bloodshed. In verses five through six, God says, 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." So, while animal blood can be shed but not consumed, human blood cannot be shed at all. Why not? Because even still, God made man in His own image. The reason it is wrong to murder another human being, or even to facilitate their untimely death, is because God has created man in his own image, and that status remains. You must understand, friends, that the Bible teaches us that humans have dignity and worth, not because of what we are in ourselves, but because of who we are in God, and who God is, ultimately. The Bible teaches us that human life is valuable, not because life is sacred in itself, but because God is sacred. Man's life is valuable and worthwhile and needs to be protected, but this is not because we have intrinsic worth. There's something higher than the worth of our life, and that's God's honor, God's glory, God's worth. our life is valuable in that we are a reflection of God himself. This point is important because the Bible does not call us to be blindly pro-life or to adopt the belief that life is sacred. Those sorts of ultimate commitments are out of step with the Bible and they're perversions of what's being taught here. The Bible's perspective on human dignity and worth and the value of human life is not, for example, is not anti-war. It is not anti-self-defense. And most importantly, it is not anti-capital punishment. Look and see how God's view of human life not only doesn't criticize capital punishment, God's value on human life requires capital punishment. Whenever we strike down another human being without cause, we are striking at the glory and image of God himself. God sees it as an act of cosmic treason when we murder someone. Whenever we allow another person to strike down another person, another human being, and that person goes unpunished, unexecuted, we are allowing high crimes against God to pass. And by doing so, we give our tacit approval to the act. We say it's not that big of a deal. To use a popular phrase, we become complicit in murder when we do not execute the murderer. A great many people in our world view capital punishment as cruel and unusual. as unjust, as unloving, as unbiblical. But in the biblical perspective, punishing murderers is among the top priorities and responsibilities of the civil government. Paul writes that the sword has been given by God to the government to punish evildoers. And if the government refuses to punish evildoers or execute murderers, then it is in fundamental rebellion against God. And when the government fails to execute justice in this way, then what ends up happening is you get vigilantes. People who can't trust the government to do their job, and so they take it upon themselves to do the government's job. Understand, my friends, we cannot and dare not be more compassionate than God. We cannot and dare not be more merciful than God. In God's eyes, executing the murderer is the most compassionate thing society can do, both for the victim and the victim's family, and for the murderer himself. Likewise, it's vital for us to see how God's implementation of capital punishment is meant to preserve human civilization. At the end of verse five, God says, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning from man. The word for fellow in Hebrew is actually the word brother. From his brother, I will require a reckoning. Commentators are agreed that this is likely a reference to the story of Cain and Abel. Remember that God spared Cain from the just penalty of murdering his brother. God showed him mercy, but that mercy in turn enabled the rise of the violent city of man before the flood. It culminated in Lamech and his glorying in his violence and depravity. You might say that with Cain, God set a precedent that murderers were not executed. But that proved to be a very, very bad precedent. It is precisely because murderers were not punished that the earth at that time was filled with violence and bloodshed. There was no justice. God is saying to Noah, no longer. No longer shall man be permitted to murder his brother and live. There will be no more Cain's, there will be no more Lamech's. What is more, I require you to be the executioner. Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed. Thus God is instituting capital punishment to prevent things from deteriorating like they did before the flood. Again, we dare not be more merciful than God. Since the death penalty has, in our society, been largely nullified into oblivion, outlawed some places, or in other places, just you've got so many appeals before it's done, it's basically a life sentence. Since we have nullified the death penalty into oblivion, is society becoming more stable and less violent? Since we respect the life of the murderer, are there less murderers and more regard for life? And understand, friends, The sixth commandment is not, you shall not kill. It's you shall not murder. Even in this text, we see there is a shedding of blood that is illegitimate and deserves capital punishment, but the execution of capital punishment is not murder. Not every killing of a human being is unlawful and punishable by death. That distinction is latent in verse six. I'll end with these words in this point, with these words from Bruce Waltke. You must understand, this is an obligation, not an option. Three times God says, I will demand an accounting. Blood shed through homicide must be dealt with. It invests the guilty with its pollution and secures its expiation by the death of the murderer or through atonement. If the blood is not compensated by capital punishment or atoned for, it brings the Lord's judgment on the land. And we're living in those days. Fourth, God resolves to preserve life. Our passage ends where it began, with God's commitment to 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've done. While the earth remains seed time and harvests cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. These words from verses, from eight, 21 and 22, are echoed in verse 11 of chapter nine. I 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. First, notice that God's covenant here is not just with Noah, or even with Noah and his family. It's for Noah and his family and every single animal. Verse 9 is absurdly specific and explicit that all the living creatures that came off the ark are recipients of this covenant. Thus, this Genesis 9 covenant is a universal covenant and not a redemptive covenant. God's not committing himself to give saving grace to the animals. He's not promising to forgive their sins, to give them an inheritance, a future, and a hope. He's not promising the coming Redeemer through Noah's line. Rather, the main point of this covenant is God's commitment to preserve the creation order. The repeated operating words are, never again, never again, never again. Though there will come a point that the earth must end. and judgment must come. Until then, two things will remain constant. First, the cycles of time and life will keep coming and going like clockwork. Sowing season will be followed by harvest season. Seasons of cold will be followed by seasons of heat. And he mentioned summer and winter, so I think he's talking more about periods of global cooling and global warming Then summer and winter. Summer will follow winter. Day will follow night. Second, though there may be local regional floods, never again will the whole earth or all life upon the earth be destroyed by the waters of a flood. God is promising that this was a one-time event. And he keeps his promise. We read in the New Testament that the final judgment, the final destruction of the earth will not be with water. Even until the end, the promise is kept. The New Testament tells us that the final judgment will be by fire. Second, God puts a sign in place to seal this covenant. This is the sign of the covenant that I established, God says. What is the sign? We all know. It's the rainbow. But you know, that's not what it's called in Hebrew. God calls it my bow. I have set my bow in the cloud. He speaks of the rainbow as his weapon of war. It's the weapon by which he laid waste the world that existed before the flood. Now he has hung it up over the mantle. It's no longer in his hands. It's a reminder of what went before and must never happen again. Now there's a lot that can be made of this. On the one hand, the shape of the rainbow, as it normally appears, reflects an ordinary archer's bow. It's a semi-curved object that hangs in the sky. So there's a metaphor here. We might also note that it's pointed not down towards the earth, threatening the earth, but up towards heaven. It also reveals the glory of God across the face of the sky. We see rainbows appear in Revelation and glimpses of God's throne room. But across the sky, it appears frequently with the presence of dark clouds. It arises from the conjunction of sun and storm, as of mercy and judgment. It is God's guarantee of grace in a stormy and violent world. But what is more, and some of you may have already noticed this, the rainbow was not created for Noah's benefit. God says, when I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant. Do you hear that? We ordinarily explain the rainbow as a sign of comfort to Noah, that when he saw the approaching rain clouds, he didn't need to be afraid. But that is not God's purpose in giving the rainbow. Now, Noah certainly did benefit. from seeing it and knowing about God's commitment. But God's express purpose was to establish the rainbow for himself, to provide a reminder to himself to not judge the earth again with the flood. Recall what God said in verse 21. He says, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. In other words, the problem created by man's sin before the flood hasn't gone away. Man is basically the same thing, the same evil, wicked, depraved creature. As a result, there will always be the growth of a demand for God to execute His wrath upon the earth. The danger of God's judgment will always be present for the earth. Therefore, God must choose to remember His promise not to wipe out the earth with a flood for our wickedness. He must choose to remember, not because he is ever in danger of forgetting, but because his wrath is that severe. The demands of his justice are that great. If it weren't for his promise, if it weren't for his forbearance, the earth, my friends, would have already been destroyed a hundred times over, if not more. This, my friends, is the point of the passage. With the covenant sign of the rainbow, God has committed himself to forbear with our sin until the end of the world. God has committed himself to forbear with our sins until Jesus returns. I'll conclude with this. We go back to 2 Peter verses 8 through 10, where he says, but do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with the roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed." On the one hand, God's forbearance with the sins of mankind is a marvelous wonder and a cause for rejoicing. God has committed himself to forbear with the sins and the wickedness of all mankind until the final judgment. He is deferring his judgment until the last day. That is a mercy. This is also the reason that evil is allowed to prosper in the present world. This is why there's so much suffering perpetrated and allowed by God by human hands. It's because of this mercy. this patience, this forbearance. The reason that there is so much suffering in the world is not because God is either not good or either can't do anything about it. It's because He has covenanted to not give us what we deserve and give us the necessary remedy to clean up this mess. God can and will bring justice to the earth, but it will mean the destruction of everything and everybody. The fact that it is delayed and that people are allowed to do terrible things to one another is a sign of God's mercy. But on the other hand, do not confuse God's patience with his approval. The delay of His coming does not give us the right to sin freely or flaunt our sin before His face. It does not give us the right to wave the rainbow flag and call evil good. In due time, we will have to answer to God. To paraphrase Paul in Romans two, do not presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience. The kindness of God is meant to lead you to repentance. But when you act out of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day when God's righteous judgment will finally be revealed. Friends, God's grace and patience is meant to lead you to repentance, that he might forgive you and restore you, because he is not eager for anyone to perish in their sins. Therefore, do not mistake God's patience with his approval. Do not think that because God is not making you feel guilty about things, that he is not making your life difficult because of things. or he is not sending a lightning bolt from heaven to correct you. Do not mistake that as God approving of your lifestyle or the choices that you've made. If you want to know if God approves of you, read the book. And if your life is not in line with the book, then God does not approve of it, even if you seem to be blessed. And if you read the book and your life is in line with God's revealed will, then God does approve of you and is pleased with you and is blessing you, even if it looks like God's turned his face away. Do not mistake the patience of God with his approval. Repent from your sins and live. Seek Him wholeheartedly in worship and you will be blessed. Let's pray. Thank you for listening to this sermon from River Community Church in Prairieville, Louisiana, where you will always find biblical preaching, meaningful worship, and the equipping of disciples. For more information on River Community Church and its ministries, please visit rivercommunity.org.