Beginning in Genesis 5 through Genesis 9. It's not going to be inordinately long, but it's the only way to really capture the whole of the Noahic covenant is to read Genesis 5 through 9. And before we do, let's pray and let's ask God to bless our time together. Father, You are high and exalted. You are great. You are full of greatness. There is none like You, O Lord. You have made the heavens and the earth and the seas and all that's in them. You have made us. We are Your people, the sheep of Your pasture. And our God, we pray that you would bless us as we study the scriptures tonight. We pray that you would be present with us in the power of the Spirit. We thank you for each of the brothers that are gathered together here, and we pray, Lord Jesus, that you would meet with us. that you would speak loudly, that you would deepen our understanding of your word, and that we would grow in faith and in love towards you and toward all your saints. Father, we pray that this time would be a time that we would grow spiritually for the rest of our lives. We pray that You would cause us to be fruitful, godly men. We pray that You would deepen our understanding of how the Scriptures are about Your Son. We pray, Lord Jesus, that You would make Yourself known, that You would be glorified, that You would be exalted, that we would be drawn into deeper communion with You. We pray that you would open our minds and hearts and open the scriptures to us. We pray these things in your name. Amen. Genesis 5. I'm going to begin in verse 25. Methuselah lived 187 years and begot Lamech. After he begot Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Methuselah were 969 years and he died. Lamech lived 182 years and had a son, and he called his name Noah, saying, This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed. After he begot Noah, Lamech lived 595 years and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died. And Noah was 500 years old, and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now skip down to chapter 6 verse 11. The earth also was corrupt before God. The earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth and indeed it was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an arc of gopher wood. Make rooms in the arc. Cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you shall make it. The length of the arc shall be 300 cubits. Its width 50 cubits. Its height 30 cubits. You shall make a window for the arc. You shall finish it to a cubit from above and set the door of the arc in its side. You shall make it with lower second and third decks. And behold, I myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life. Everything that's on the earth shall die, but I will establish my covenant with you. And you shall go into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come into you to keep them alive. You shall take for yourself of all food that is eaten, and you shall gather it to yourself, and it shall be food for you and for them." Thus Noah did, according to all that God commanded him, so he did. Now skip over to the end of chapter eight, I just want to point out, I'm not going to read it, but the final verses in the end of chapter 8, Noah steps off the ark and the very first thing he does is he sacrifices. And the Lord smells a sweet smelling aroma. And the Lord says, essentially, I will never again destroy the earth as I have done because the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. Interesting that that's the same reason God flooded the world back in chapter 6. But now in chapter 9, God blessed Noah and his sons and said, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, every bird of the air, and all that move on the earth, on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand, and every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs, but you shall not eat the flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning, from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. For the hand of every man's brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God he made man. And as for you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it. Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, As for me, behold, I will establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you, with every living creature that's with you, the birds, the cattle, every beast of the earth with you. Of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth, thus I establish my covenant with you. Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that's with you for perpetual generations. I set my rainbow in the cloud and it shall be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. It shall be when I bring a cloud over the earth that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. The waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow shall be in the cloud. I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that's on the earth. God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. Well, if you were to look in the scriptures, we've been talking about covenant theology and biblical theology over the last couple meetings together. If you were to look in the scriptures, the first time you would find the word covenant is here in this section of Genesis in God's dealings with Abraham. It's the Hebrew word berith. It's used, I think, 290 times in the Old Testament. And this is the very first place that that's found. It's the first time God speaks of my covenant. It's the first time He speaks of the covenant. But I think it becomes clear that God is building on what He's already done with Adam after the fall. He's building on that promise of Genesis 3.15 that He's going to send a Redeemer. Everything is building on that first preaching of the Gospel. That's God's first covenant of redemption dealing with man. what theologians call the covenant of grace. God came to fall in the rebellious man and he said, I am going to bring a redeemer and he's going to crush the head of the serpent. He's going to conquer the one that conquered man. He's going to undo everything that man has now done. And he's going to be a male. And we looked at all that. And so he promised that he's going to send a redeemer. Now, not long after that promise, you see how corrupt the world gets. You see that man, in his pride, thinks he can make it up to heaven, builds the Tower of Babel. I actually think the Tower of Babel, and there's lots of explanations for it, but I think it's man trying to avoid another flood after this. in Genesis 10. He's trying to get up in exaltation and even avoid the judgment of God. But before this, you see that the earth is full of violence, that men have united as it were. I said Jonathan Edwards' explanation of that, I think may be right, is that the visible church Those descended from Seth were being persecuted by the world. So when it says the world was full of violence, there was violence aimed at the church. Satan was trying to stomp out the promise of the Redeemer and stop God from doing what God had said he would do. And so the world becomes corrupt through and through. You have that interesting thing about the sons of God and the daughters of men. And what does that mean? And, you know, some people say those were angels. Some people say they were judges. Some people say that was the godly covenant line. And they started intermarrying with the daughters of Cain. That's what I actually think. But that very strange little thing about the sons of God and the daughters of man and violence filling the earth. And God comes to a point where his judgment must be executed. Man has become so thoroughly rebellious and wicked, which is what man was at the fall. But now mankind together that God says, I'm going to destroy all flesh, but I'm going to have mercy on Noah. Now, if we didn't know our Bibles well when it says Noah found grace in God's sight, we might twist that to think that Noah somehow deserved grace at God's hand. That would be very contrary to the teaching of Scripture. God had mercy on Noah. God was sovereignly gracious to Noah. Noah wasn't good enough to get grace. That would be a perversion of what the Scripture teaches. But Noah was upright because he had received grace. And so God dealt with Noah in a very special way as his child. And God said, I'm going to spare Noah. I'm going to spare your sons and your sons' wives and your wife and your family. And here's what I want you to do now. When we read the New Testament, there would be a danger of us quickly saying, well, the main point of God's dealing with Noah is that Noah was this great example of faith and that by faith he built the ark. That's what Hebrews 11 says. It was his example. We want to be like Noah. Noah was a good example. That's true. That's not the principle thing that we want to glean tonight, though. I think there's a danger there because when Hebrews is setting out the great hall of faith in Hebrews 11, the purpose of the writer of Hebrews is to show these men trusted in the redemptive promise of God of a Redeemer. It wasn't primarily about Noah building an ark. It was about Noah, by faith, in the promise, being moved with godly fear and thereby acting in faith. But it was always with respect to the promise of Genesis 3.15. It was always with respect that God was going to send a Redeemer. Faith is a response to the redemptive Word of God. So it wasn't primarily about Noah's godliness and Noah's doing. It was about Noah's God and what Noah's God had promised and what Noah did in response to that promise. But when I think we, when we come to this, what we want to look at, we want to see the way that Noah and the Noahic covenant played a role in redemptive history. So we want to understand the significance of Genesis 6 through 9 in redemptive history. And I think we see several things. The first is that Noah is very clearly a type of Christ, and he is a typical Redeemer. He is a typical Adam, second Adam, and he is a typical rest provider. Now, very clearly he's a typical Redeemer. How? Everybody with Noah gets redeemed, typically, in the ark. Everybody with Noah gets physically redeemed. He is the physical redeemer of his family. He builds the ark. He gets his family in the ark. God brings the animals in the ark. Everybody with Noah gets redeemed. Everybody with Jesus gets redeemed. Very clearly, he's a type of Christ. He doesn't give that ultimate redemption to his family because we see Ham and how wicked he is and what he does. And then we see the earth populated again with wicked people because the flood didn't cure anybody's heart. But he is nevertheless a typical redeemer. I think that's important because in covenantal history, God does that a lot. Moses is a typical redeemer. He leads his people out of Egypt, through the Red Sea. He is not the Christ, but he is a type of Christ. He is the lesser Christ, but he leads his people out. Out of bondage, Jesus likens his death and resurrection to the exodus when Moses and Elijah show up on the Transfiguration. They speak with Jesus about his exodus, Luke 9.31. his death and resurrection of the greater exodus. So Jesus is the greater Noah. Everybody with him gets saved. Everybody in him gets saved. I think that's abundantly clear from what the rest of the New Testament tells us. If anyone's in Christ, he is a new creation. We'll talk tonight about how Noah stepped off the ark into a new creation, typically. Well, everybody with Jesus forever enters into the new heavens and the new earth. So, Noah is a typical redeemer. Noah is a second Adam. How is Noah a type, a typical second Adam? Well, you would find this similar language, exactly, the creational language that God gave to Adam, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and that language about the animals all according to their kind, Adam was with the animals. Adam was to name the animals. Noah was to bring the animals into the ark according to their kind. Adam was to be fruitful, multiply and have dominion. Noah was told he would have dominion. The fear of him would be on all the animals. Adam fell and realized his nakedness. Noah falls and becomes naked. There is a very clear parallel between Adam and Noah because Noah becomes typically the head of the new humanity. Typically. Not actually, that's Jesus, the second Adam. He becomes the head of the new humanity. But, Noah in a sense, God takes Noah and he redoes creation with Noah. Now this is interesting because, what was the flood, but an undoing of creation? God had brought the world out of chaos by separating the waters, and God destroyed the world and brought chaos with the waters. So the flood is nothing other than covenant reversal, creation reversal. Instead of blessing, God separated the waters. He saw that it was good. He blessed his image bearers. He blessed the animals. Instead of that, he curses and he uses that creation to judge and he covers the earth again with the waters. Noah becomes a second Adam. In a sense, God is saying, what he is saying is there has to be new creation. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. Noah is also a typical rest provider. Now, what do I mean by that? Noah's name in Hebrew virtually means rest. If you look at the Hebrew word for rest and you look at Noah's name, they're almost identical. And Noah's dad, Lamech, we read that out of Genesis 5, he named Noah Noah. Why? What was the reason why he named his son rest? He said, this one will give us rest or relief from what? The ground and the toils that we have because of the ground that the Lord cursed. So, that goes back to what? Genesis. It goes back to Genesis 3. Adam sins. God says, cursed is everything. Cursed is the ground. Thorns and thistles. And then, by the way, you're going to return to the ground. Why does God curse the ground? because man was made out of the ground and rebelled against God. So God curses the place from which man came. Noah's dad names him Noah because his dad is believing the promise of Genesis 3.15. Noah's dad Lamech. Remember, they didn't have a Bible. They had oral tradition passed down. The perfect land bridge, by the way, from Adam to Noah via Methuselah. The reason he lived so long and that was such a big deal, contrary to the world that says that's why the Bible's not true, is because God wanted His revelation passed down. You have a perfect land bridge between Adam and Noah via Methuselah, where people that were alive when Adam was still alive, were alive when Methuselah was. Methuselah was alive when Adam was still alive. Methuselah was alive when Noah was alive. So it's a perfect bridge for revelation. Genesis 3.15 obviously is passed down. Noah's dad believes that, names him Noah in anticipation of the Redeemer. It's not Noah. Noah's not the Redeemer, but they don't know who the Redeemer's going to be. So he names his son Noah because he's expecting that God will fulfill the covenant promise. He's acting in faith. He says that this one, his hope is, will give us rest from the ground which the Lord has cursed. Now, does Noah give rest from the ground? Yes and no. Yes, he gives rest from the ground, because when he steps off the ark with his family, the judgment water is receding. There are no more wicked people other than he and his sons and his sons' wives and his wife. God has taken away all of the violence and the corruption. And in a sense, typically, there is rest. Typically. Now, we know that that's not going to last long and that there's not really rest. And then Israel is going to come to the Jordan River and they're going to want to enter into the land. And Hebrews 4 says that Joshua didn't give them rest. that they didn't even find rest in the land. That rest was the great theme of the Bible, that what man needed most was rest. Jeremiah the prophet said, there is no peace for the wicked, God says to Jeremiah. There's no peace for the wicked. That what man needs more than anything is rest. That's why Augustine said that our souls are restless until they find rest in God. Now, does Jesus give that rest? Yes. It's why Jesus heals on the Sabbath day, the day of rest. It's why He heals on the Sabbath day, because He's the rest giver. And it's interesting that right before He heals in Matthew 12, on the Sabbath day, and makes everybody mad, He says, come unto Me and I will give you rest, in Matthew 11, 26 and following. Come unto Me and I will give you rest for your souls. And Jesus gives rest from sin and from Satan and from the world, and He does that by Himself becoming a curse for us. By Himself, Isaiah says in Isaiah 53, that the chastisement for our dispeace was upon Him, and by His strikes we're healed. And Jesus wore what? The crown of thorns. Which were what? the ground that the Lord had cursed. Jesus wears the curse on his head because he is the rest provider. He is showing that he is the one who came to give rest from the ground that the Lord had cursed. He is the second Adam. He is the Redeemer. He is the rest provider. Jesus Christ does everything that Noah only typifies in Old Covenant redemptive history. So that's the first thing I want to say. Redemptive role of Noah as a type of Christ. Secondly, I want to talk more about the redemptive foreshadowing of the new creation. Now, we've kind of already touched on this. What I want to do is back up and talk about the Ark for a second. You could sum up the storyline of the Bible as God is going to bring about new creation. You come to the book of Revelation, and Jesus sits on the throne, and He says, Behold, I make all things new. And He's talking about the new heavens and the new earth. And John says, I saw new heavens and a new earth, for the former were passed away. And Peter says, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells. And the whole point of the Bible is not just that God's going to redeem a people. He is going to do that. But He's going to redeem a people that He's going to dwell with in a redeemed creation. That's the point of Romans 8. groans and travails like a pregnant woman ready to give for something new and you know the frogs croak and the alligators attack and everything's in chaos because God has to bring something new out of something old and corrupt and fallen and God promises that he's going to recreate the world and he's going to do that through the death of Jesus just like he's going to redeem a people through the death of Jesus. I'll come back to that. But What was the original creation before the fall other than a temple where God dwelt with his people? was a temple. I want to recommend anything G.K. Beale has ever written on this. A guy named T. Desmond Alexander has a book called From Eden to the New Jerusalem. I want to recommend that. G.K. Beale wrote a book called The Temple and the Church's Mission. And he is going to, I think, very convincingly argue that the Garden of Eden, Eden was the temple. Before there ever was a temple, it was where God dwelt with his image bearer. And the rest of the storyline of the Bible is the restoration of God's presence with man, because that was what was lost through the fall. Man was cut off, flaming cherubim, blocking the way to the tree of life, blocking the way to the presence of God. God and man now separated by sin. Man can't get back into the presence of God. God can't look on evil. So God's going to become man, die, rise again, so he can reconcile his people, so he will again dwell with man. And God gives these little mini stepping stones of the temple to the new creation. Temple to new creation. Very clearly, the tabernacle is one of those stepping stones because that's where God dwells before the temple is built. And I think the land of Israel is very clearly a temple. It's the holy land. It's where God dwells with his people. It's likened to Eden. It's a land flowing with milk and honey. Eden was a garden rich with milk and honey, no doubt. It's that imagery. God is going to restore His presence. He's going to build a city in Israel. He's going to build a temple there until Christ comes and says, destroy this temple and in three days I'll build it again. He is the temple. God dwells fully in Him. He is God with us. But one of the stepping stones you might miss is that the ark that Noah builds is a temple. How is the Ark a temple? Well, it's one of the only times in the Old Testament that we're given measurements, exact measurements, other than with Solomon's temple. I think that's interesting. It's also one of two or three places where there are three levels or three layers. The temple had the outer court for the Gentiles, the inner court for the Jews, and then the most holy place. The tabernacle also had those three parts. Mount Sinai had three levels. Moses went up into the most holy place, left the elders outside, and the people stood beyond the foot of the mountain. The Ark, I believe, and G.K. Beal argues this too, it was a temple. And that God dwelt with his redeemed creation, not just man, but man and animal, in the Ark. that while he was pouring his wrath down, and while that redemption was coming through judgment, God was dwelling with Noah and his family and his creation in the ark. And when they stepped off onto the new creation, typically into a world that had been purged, as it were, God was there dwelling with him. We know that because Noah sacrifices and God smells it and he's there. And there is that picture of redemption and reconciliation being foreshadowing what we would have in Jesus. So, I think you have a picture of the new creation in the temple, in the Ark Temple. And I think you have a picture of the new creation with Noah coming and then re-habitating the newly purified world. And ultimately, neither of those are the new creation, because there's still sin in Noah's heart. Noah gets drunk after this. There's still sin in Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We see how the nations are populated and how much paganism perverts true religion because of the depravity. And God says after the flood, He says that the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. That the flood never cured man's heart. What that shows is that while redemption would come through judgment, and we'll talk about this in a second, while redemption would come through judgment, the judgment of the flood couldn't change man's heart, just like the judgment of the last day with fire won't change man's heart. That won't change anybody's heart. The only judgment is the judgment that fell on Jesus at Calvary. Now, we'll come back to all that. But the point of why God said He's not going to flood the earth again is really multi-layered. One, God wanted to bring about the new creation. He had promised that at Genesis 3.15. He had promised to send a Redeemer. Now, had God not fulfilled that promise, God would have been unfaithful. He would have been a liar. And God is not a liar. God's going to fulfill His promise. So, one reason He promises not to destroy the earth again, the big reason that He's not going to destroy the earth again, is because He has to send a Redeemer. And that Redeemer is in His humanity, in Noah's loins on the ark. Jesus is in Noah's loins. Though, yes, He's the Son of God, in His divine nature He's God, yet in His human nature, is in the loins of Noah on the ark. If you look at the genealogy of Jesus, Noah is there. He's on the ark. God is going to fulfill that plan to bring the Redeemer because he's going to bring about a new creation. He's going to redeem his people. He's going to restore the regeneration of all things. Peter talks about in Acts chapter I think two or four. The time of the restoration of all things. And so that's God's plan. That's God's promise. That's God's plan. That's what all these little things are pointing to. It's not just I'm a God of wrath and I'm going to wipe everybody out. That's not the only thing that the flood is about. That is what it's about in part. Man deserves judgment. Man's under the judgment of God. No one deserves to be saved. Noah wasn't good enough to get grace. Noah got grace because God decided to be gracious. But God had a plan. Now, new creation's the big issue. How does the new creation happen? Well, now, this is videoed and I'll probably get in trouble for this. This is speculative theology. I've never read this. But I do wonder. The blood of Jesus when he's crucified falls into the ground. The ground is a big deal in the Bible. I mean, God made man out of the ground. The ground rebelled against God. God cursed the ground. Jesus is going to wear that symbol of the curse on his head at Calvary. The land of Israel is land. It's ground. When you get to the book of Revelation, the church is called the New Jerusalem. It's not about an earthly anything. It's about the church with God. I do wonder, based on Hebrews 12, where it says that the blood of Jesus cries out better things than the blood of Abel. Remember, Cain shed Abel's blood into the ground. And God said, the blood of Abel cries out to me from the ground for judgment and vengeance. And then Hebrews says the blood of Jesus cries out for better things, redemption. And I do wonder, I don't want to overly spiritualize, but I wonder the fact that Christ's blood being shed into the earth is not a securing of the new creation. I think you could take that maybe too far, but it is interesting with where the Bible starts and where it ends up and how it gets there. And we know that the blood of Jesus does secure the new creation, his death and his resurrection. When he rises on the third day, he brings in the new age, the new creation. Paul says, if anyone is in Christ, literally, he is new creation. He's part of the new creation. Not just he is a new creation, he's part of the new creation. So Jesus rises, he brings about the new humanity, but he also secures the new heavens and the new earth. So Noah is definitely in that whole preparatory element of what God's going to do. It's not going to be for a long time, but He is definitely a picture prophecy, a living picture prophecy of what God's going to do. Third thing, if you can hang with me. The redemptive purpose of animals. Now, most of us were taught that God made them go in the arci, arci two by two, and actually that's only partially true. Seven clean, two unclean. It wasn't two by two, it was seven clean, two unclean, and then of those two, unclean two by two. Why do we already have the clean, unclean distinction? Well, I think several reasons. That's very important. as the Pentateuch goes on and Moses writes the rest of the five books, the first five books. God very clearly establishes a clean, unclean animal distinction to do several things. One, for sacrifice. Remember, Noah steps off the ark and he sacrifices. It's the first thing that he does. He realizes that he is sinful and that God is holy and that blood has to be shed. And no doubt, he takes of a clean, unblemished lamb or bull or any of those other sacrifices God had instituted with Moses later on very clearly. No doubt that was already what God required. And so Noah had to know what was clean, because that would prefigure the sinlessness of Jesus. A clean sacrifice, a lamb without blemish, without spot. So you already have clean, unclean animals for sacrifice. Remember, all those animals are going to repopulate and God's going to use that in the sacrificial system in Israel, in redemptive history. So all those animals in the ark, are preparatory for the Passover lamb, for all the sacrifices, for everything that God's going to do throughout the rest of Israel's history till Jesus comes. So God is already preparing redemptive history in the Ark. Now, also, we know from the New Testament that the clean, unclean distinction marked out Jew and Gentile in redemptive history. Remember, in Acts, 10 and 11, that big deal where Peter's up in Cornelius' house, and he's like arguing with God, because that's what Peter likes to do, and he's like, no, Lord, I'm not going to eat this. And he's like, eat. And he's like, no, Lord, I'm not going to eat. Eat. No, Lord, I'm not going to eat this. I've never eaten anything unclean. There's nothing unclean anymore. The point was, God was redeeming not just Jew, but Gentile. And so when God established that clean, unclean animal distinction, He was setting apart the covenantally holy from the covenantally unholy. And he was showing his people that they needed to be cleansed by Jesus. And he was already showing that there was a distinction between what he made holy and what was by nature unholy. And when Christ comes, that's broken down, abolished. All of that is in the Ark. Listen, this is the amazing thing about the Noahic Covenant. That's all in there already. before anything happens with Moses and before there's even an Israel. There's no Abraham. There's no Israel. There's no Moses. God is already preparing all that. If that doesn't build your faith in the rest of the Bible, I don't know what will. That God is already preparing everything He's going to do in the ark. It's like a seed that has everything in it. that God packed everything in there and plants in the ground and it grows into a tree. It has everything contained in it for the rest of redemptive history till Jesus comes. Now, I will say one more thing about the animals. So you have clean and unclean for the sacrificial system. You have clean and unclean for the Jew-Gentile distinction. But then, I think you also have God giving man meat to eat. Interesting. Remember, before the flood, man could only eat vegetables. And then, after the flood, God's like, now I give you all this meat, only you can't eat it with the blood. Why? Why does God... This is a big question. I really am surprised how many times I've taught this, and somebody's come back and said, I don't know about that, but they don't give me a substitute answer. So I'm just going to put it out to you. The question is, why does God say it's okay to eat meat now, but not... before the fall and up till this point. My answer to that is that God was going to institute sacrificial meals like the Passover so that one day Jesus could say, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, that he was the Passover lamb that had to be feasted on by faith, that if you were an old covenant saint and you can tell all your vegan friends this that are Christians, you could not be a vegan if you were an old covenant saint. You had to eat the Passover lamb. I don't care how much people like being vegetarian. If you were an old covenant saint, you could not be vegetarian. God commanded you, unless you ate that lamb, you were despising his covenant and the redemption he would give. And so, and so, I think I just made a vegan daddy laugh. And so, and so, I think God gave I think God gave Noah the recreative mandate that now he and his descendants and we could eat meat because God was going to use those sacrificial meals to be pictures of feeding on Jesus by faith. That's the only answer I can come up with for that. So I think another reason why you have clean animals, another reason why you have animals, another reason why you have meat eating of those animals, eating the meat of those animals, all in the Noahic Covenant. Now, the fourth, and there's so many more things we can talk about, if I could just talk about two more things, if you guys can hang with me. The fourth is the redemptive nature of the death penalty. Now, if you read Genesis 6-9, you might be tempted to be like, okay, God floods the world, saves Noah, the waters stay up for a long time, these doves go out, one comes back, one stays out, the waters go down, Noah populates, Noah sacrifices, God says you can eat meat, then God says you can't kill people and animals can't kill people or else you're going to get killed, and then he puts the bow in the sky and a lot of it just seems, it could seem very disjointed. But I think even the death penalty being very clearly stated in Genesis 9 has a purpose of God's plan of redemption. Now follow me. Now God does say the reason is because man's in the image of God. You are in the image of God. That's why I shouldn't kill you. And that's why you shouldn't kill me. You better not kill me. Because I'm in the image of God and you're in the image of God. And that is what he says in the text. But I think here's the logic of why God gives it when he gives it to Noah. God has promised not to flood the earth again and destroy the earth for the flood. And God's plan, and he's told Noah, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. And he's put clean and unclean animals in the ark that are going to be a picture of Jew and Gentile, which don't even exist yet. They're going to be preparatory pictures. And God promises Abraham, just a little bit after this, that all the families of the earth are going to be blessed in him. And God's plan from eternity was to redeem a people from every tongue, tribe, nation, and language. And in order for that to happen, man would have to multiply. And if there was no death penalty and murderers could just run around and do whatever they want, there could be a serious breach of population. If you had mass murderers everywhere, if you had Adolf Hitler's everywhere committing mass genocide, that's a murderer committing mass genocide. You have serious population control. And God wants the world to be filled so that Redeemer can come and also God wants Redeemer to come. He's going to bring the Redeemer. And in order for all that to happen, there's a restraining value to the death penalty that I see as serving the redemptive purposes of God. Now, remember with the Noahic covenant, God is making a covenant, not just with Noah and his descendants, like he does with everybody, all the other covenantal administrations, but he's making it with all of creation, right? Why is God making a covenant with all of creation, with Noah, in light of redemptive history? It's actually not a trick question. What does the world become? It becomes the stage in which redemption occurs. God is making a covenant with creation because he's going to enter into that creation in Jesus. And he's going to redeem a people out of every tongue, tribe, nation, and language on this planet throughout time. So creation becomes the platform, the stage in which redemption is shown forth when God enters into creation in Christ. So I understand, and you guys can disagree with this, these are some tough things, but I even understand the death penalty playing a role in redemption. And here's the other reason why. Because when God gives Israel, God sets Israel apart as this nation state. It's the only nation state, the only theocratic nation ever in the history of the world. And it's no longer one, but it was one in the Old Covenant. America's not a theocracy. Israel was until Christ came. I see the civil laws given to Israel, so many of them having to do with death penalty, having a restraining, not just showing that God's just, obviously it's showing that God's holy, that He's just, that He hates sin, that sin deserves death. But God is preserving a nation that otherwise would destroy itself with his wickedness. I mean, look at Israel. Israel becomes worse than the nations and they've got the civil law and the gospel and they become worse than the nations. What would they be like without civil law? What would they have been like without the death penalty? They even take that and pervert that and the Pharisees want to stone everybody. But God was in a sense restraining wickedness for the purpose of redemption. And that's what I think, that's why I think we find that. The last thing, and thank you for hanging with such a long talk. The last thing I want to talk about is the rainbow. God never makes a covenantal arrangement, and this is not new. By the way, a guy named Williams Umbrell wrote a book called Covenant and Creation, and he argues from the language of Genesis 8, I think accurately, that when God says, I will establish my covenant. He doesn't say, I will create my covenant with Noah. He says, I will establish my covenant. It's the word means to cause to stand. So it's a covenant already in existence. Genesis 3, 15. So God is saying, I'm going to cause my covenantal promise to bring a redeemer to stand. And God never makes a covenantal administration without giving a sign. That's kind of a beautiful thing that God is a God of word and a God of a book and a God of speech. He also condescends to our weaknesses. and giving us visible signs. And he puts the rainbow in the sky, and he says he puts it in the cloud. And if you did a study of the idea of the bow, it's not so much a rainbow as it is a war bow. So in the scriptures, the word used, therefore, I will put my bow in the sky has more to do with a a warrior's bow. And what God is doing is He is symbolically setting down the bow by saying, I'm not going to make war the way I have made war. There is going to be redemption through judgment. There is going to be a day of judgment by fire. But God is, in a sense, setting down his weapon of destruction. He's saying, I am laying down my weapon. And it's interesting that that bow is arced towards God. And many have observed this, that in a sense, what God is saying is the only way I can do that is if the arrow is aimed at my heart. And so just like with the cutting of the covenant with Abraham that we'll look at in the future, and God going through and saying, whoever breaks this covenant, let this happen to him. And that happens to Jesus at Calvary. God is in a sense saying in the Noahic covenant, there will be judgment, but that bow will be aimed at me to bring redemption. And I do think that God actually, it's interesting, God doesn't say He put the rainbow in the sky for us, even though we benefit from the knowledge of that. He says, when I see the bow, I will remember my covenant. And what He's doing is God doesn't need to be reminded of anything, but He is so showing us the certainty of His promise, and that it comes from Him, and that He will not forget it, and that He will put this sign even for us to know that He is remembering His covenant. And it's interesting when you come to the book of Revelation, what is there around the throne? There's a rainbow around the throne of Christ. And Jesus is always remembering His covenant mercy for His people. For all eternity, there's a rainbow around the throne, and Jesus Christ is forever remembering that covenant mercy that He merits and purchases for us in His death on the cross and His resurrection. Now, there's so much more we can talk about. I'm going to stop and I want you guys to ask questions, give me pushback. Tell me if this was helpful, if it wasn't, what else you'd like to look into in this. Bye, Jeff. Another vegan hits the road. Bye, buddy. Eat a big steak in memory of Jesus. Come on, what do you guys want to talk about? There's got to be things. There's more. There's so much more here. Have you guys heard this before? Any of this? Some of this? It was a lot. This is why we video and record these, so you guys can go back and... I'm more so thinking if I could just take that and put it... Well, you can get it on the video or the audio. Look, there's lots of good books. Let me recommend a couple. Okay. Dumbrell. Creation and Covenant. It's like $130 because it's out of print, but you can copy anything out of here from my copy. It's really good. W.J. Dunbarrell, Covenant and Creation. He's got a great chapter on Noah. O. Palmer Robertson, you can buy this cheap. Christ of the Covenants. A lot of that stuff is in here, not all of it, but a lot. It's good. It's really helpful. And then a book, and I give a warning because I think this guy has some questionable theology at points. He's been kind of a controversial figure, but this is an outstanding book. And it's called The Gospel in Genesis by Warren Gage and worth buying. And he talks about Noah as the second Adam, like the whole book is about Adam and Noah and paralleling all that stuff. So a lot of what I shared with you is in those books.