We're back in Genesis chapter 6 this morning. In particular, verses 18 through 22. And this sermon's title is God's Covenant with Noah. Now last Sunday from the prior verses, 11 through 17, we saw just how corrupt mankind had become. So corrupt that from God's perspective, the population was so large that the entire globe, the whole earth, was filled with violence. But we do know that there were some sense of normalcy For Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24 that the days of his return would be like the days of Noah, but then he tells us that during the days of Noah, people were eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage. A normal life had to be going on as well, even with all the violence that was occurring. Not too much unlike our own day, right? So the Lord told Noah that he decided to destroy mankind with the global flood. Everything that had the breath of life, breathing air, would certainly die, even animals and birds. And today, in the fossils dug up around the world, you can see evidence of this on every mountaintop, even the highest mountaintop of 30,000 feet above sea level, Mount Everest. There are fossilized fish from the great floodwaters being up that high. Now, we did address some of the evidence for proof of a global flood, and there's plenty of it. But yet, scientists who are supposed to be scientists and honestly evaluate the evidence deny it or reinterpret it because they are so in love and stuck on the fairy tale of evolution. And a global flood would indeed, of course, require a very large and sturdy ship to save eight people and thousands of animals, birds, and insects, and the provisions, the food, the sustenance that would be needed. So the Lord gave Noah instructions for the material and the measurements of the ark. And we saw that as we completed the passage last week at verse 17. And so here we are. We ended with the Ark's architecture, and now the Lord establishes a covenant with Noah and gives Noah three commands. So we start off in verse 18, the first part, 18a, with God originates the covenant. Where it reads, he's talking to Noah here. But I will establish. Now the basic meaning of the Hebrew word there for establish is stand up, erect. He will stand up a covenant with Noah. Now, in this first part of the verse, this is the very first time the Hebrew word for covenant is used in the entire Bible. This isn't just some verbal promise. This isn't A shallow agreement. We see those a lot in our culture. This covenant from God is strong, a binding promise with consequences, if not kept by those he tells it to, he dictates it to. Perhaps in our modern day, this, I guess, an equivalent would be Perhaps somebody signs a promissory note on a mortgage. You stop paying your mortgage, you don't keep the parts of the agreement, then eventually you lose the house. Perhaps an even better Example would be that of a marriage contract. It's binding. Once broken, there are serious consequences, ramifications if breached. And God sees covenants as so binding that He speaks of the day and the night, and is establishing those to occur at their appointed times, as an example in Jeremiah 33, 20. Thus says the Lord, if you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time. So all of us should be used to seeing The predictability, the reliability of the times of a 24-hour day and shifting as we rotate and go through the seasons. Predictability since the beginning of time, 6,000 years ago. So the Lord, He creates the covenants. God starts and solidifies the covenant with Noah. So here indeed we do see that God is the originator of this very first covenant. It's important to note this, that it's not the other way around. Noah, nor any man, has the right to dictate the terms of a covenant to God. For the Lord to approve, he must be the covenant originator. God says in this verse, My covenant, not our covenant, My covenant. Noah and man, for that matter, all of us, submits to and obeys the covenant's requirements. trusts in the covenant's promises, but the covenants are owned by the Lord. An example on a large macro level, if you will, is all the plethora of pluralism. The huge amount of world religions out there where man makes his attempt to dictate an agreement to God to please Him to go to heaven one day or reach some sort of nirvana. Indeed, we do have 4,000 religions at least in the world. But of course, there are five main ones. that encompass the entire world's population. And this is the make-believe world of man. That he is acceptable to God. And the commonality in these defined religions is the pleasing of God by good deeds. Or more good deeds than bad deeds. Isn't it telling that Christianity is the only so-called religion that says the exact opposite? You see, the man-made religions are man-centered, man-dependent. Whereas, Christianity, biblical Christianity, the New Covenant, is Christ-centered, Christ-dependent, dependent on the work of Christ, not the work of man, the pure work, deed of the Lord Jesus Christ. Is biblical, true Christianity, the new covenant, the only acceptable covenant to the Lord? Now to simplify this, the requirements for this covenant. We can look at 1 John 5 and 11 and 12 where it reads, and this is the testimony that God has given us eternal life. And this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. You must have the Son of God to meet the requirements of God's one and only covenant that is pleasing to Him. Now in chapter six, we get the introduction of this covenant, and then, of course, we'll get to Genesis chapter nine, where we see that after the flood is finished, the Lord speaks to Noah and his sons and gives the specifics of the covenant. For the sake of time, I will not read the entire passage, but so you get the gist. Genesis nine, verse eight. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I established 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 the flood 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. You know, Noah and his family needed to hear this. after what they saw. They needed to hear this covenant, this sure standing promise from the Lord. Put yourselves in their place. You know, we read through this passage, and it seems so long ago. But these were real people that went through a global flood and sat in a huge wooden ship for a whole year and had all that time to think about the wrath of God that was unleashed on all of humanity and the terrible price paid for sin. This had to have been traumatic. This was the worst trauma since the beginning of creation. So, it would be natural for them to wonder if this might happen again. They needed to hear this firm and reassuring message from the Lord that he would never flood the earth again. But although the first covenant, the covenant to Noah wasn't the only covenant in the Bible. We hear of the new covenant, but there's some other covenants in between. As you read through God's Word, you see what's known as the Noahic Covenant. God would never flood the earth again, and he gives the sign of a rainbow. And then, several hundred years later, we have the Abrahamic Covenant, where the Lord chooses Abraham and his future seed. to be the savior of the world, and he gives a promise of a huge piece of land in the Middle East, the land of Canaan. And the sign here is not a rainbow this time, it's the sign of circumcision on the men. And then of course God continues this covenant with Isaac and Jacob, and we see that in Genesis and then later on in Leviticus. And then we have, thirdly, what's known as the Mosaic Covenant, which we might also recognize as the Old Covenant, the Old Testament Covenant. And then we have the Davidic Covenant as Israel and the world, felt the pressure of the law, the specific laws given to God's people that they could not keep. God makes a promise to King David that one day one of his heirs would rule and reign on his throne forever from Jerusalem. And we see that in 2 Samuel and Jeremiah 33. And then, of course, the new covenant, the very last covenant that completes it all, was promised back in Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 through 34. But in our text this morning, Genesis chapter 6, this is the first time that the word covenant is used. So although covenant theology, a grid, a framework of covenants, they have a couple that they see the structure in before, strictly speaking, that this word is used, where they see a covenant of works, and then an Adamic covenant after Adam and Eve sinned. But strictly speaking, this is the first time that the word covenant is used. So, when we think of covenant theology or dispensational theology, we need to be careful of using those frameworks as we interpret the Bible. whether it's literally or figuratively based on what we believe to be true from particular man-made theological frameworks. So be careful of your theology paradigms. Take each passage, each book, in its particular context. Theological frameworks have their place and they're helpful in helping us systemize what we understand of scripture, but be cautious in making those particular frameworks on the same level as the Bible. I also want to say, as we think of covenants, from time to time, not often, I run into people who take this a little too far and would argue from a passage like this one with Noah that your children will be saved. I know that those of us in here who love the Lord, we're saved by him. We're concerned about our kids. We love our kids, what are their eternal destinies? And some, with perhaps the right motives, but bad theology, would argue that because of this covenant, that's evidence that God will save your kids. I also lastly want to say that God's covenant is perfect. That is an area that we need to leave alone. We need to let God be the originator of the covenant. You can think of back in Judges, Jephthah. Actually back in Deuteronomy, I believe, Jephthah. He wanted to conquer the Ammonites, so he made a rash vow, a rash covenant, that if the Lord would give the Ammonites into his hand, that he would sacrifice the first thing to come out of the door of his home. So he indeed did conquer the Ammonites. And what happened after he returned home? His one and only daughter comes out the door. And here he is bound by a rash, horrible vow that God didn't tell him to make. God didn't tell him to make that covenant. We need to let God make up the covenant and the requirements of it. So God stands up, He establishes, He originates the covenant with Noah, and now we have God's first command of the covenant, the most important command, save human life, in the second half of verse 18. And it reads, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. Now there is a significance to the order here. You see, Noah is, even though the mother, Noah's wife, even though the mother of their three sons is listed after the sons along with, but before the sons' three wives. Nothing in the Bible is by accident. There's an order and a purpose to it. So I believe it's correct to conclude that the reason why this is done is that staying consistent with scripture that men are seen as the heads of the families. And we see this later on in chapter nine. Where God goes from just telling Noah that He would establish His covenant with him, to now God telling Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, He would establish His covenant with them. In this, for the purpose that these men, although the text doesn't tell us that their wives were present when he got instructed to them, nonetheless, these men in this group were in turn expected to teach and lead their wives in the ways of God. Chapter nine, verse eight, then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, behold, I established my covenant with you and your offspring after you. They were to teach that to their wives and their descendants. And this covenant requires compliance. Noah and his family have to go into the ark. They have to go into the ark for this covenant to be true, to come to fruition for them to be saved out of the waters. They must believe God that indeed these floodwaters are going to come. Now you have this word here, this phrase, you shall come. is not just a future tense use, like, oh, it will happen in the future. This is indeed a command. And you know this from two evidences. First, when you read the Ten Commandments themselves, they're worded very similarly. And then, of course, when we read verse 22, as we get to the end of that, this passage, it says, Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. You know, as you read through your Bible, there are two words, two Hebrew words for the English word ark, and I believe I included these in your notes. The word used here for ark, teba, is the type of ark. that floats in water to save life. And we see it here. And then only one other time, it's used in reference to Moses in Exodus. So it's in reference to the great flood and in Exodus for Moses. And then one time when the flood is remembered, mentioned in the Psalms, the same word is used. We do have another word for the word ark in the Bible, aron. And it occurs in Exodus 25, 14, and it refers to the Ark of the Covenant. Totally different ark. Even though we have the word covenant in there, this is different. And it's only used in reference to the Ark of the Covenant and one other time as it speaks of Joseph's coffin in Genesis 50, 26. So this first command is for Noah to save himself and his seven family members by all of them going into the ark. Noah and his family would float above the means and the measure of God's watery wrath. While all others indeed perished. And by God's grace, Noah and his family escaped the floodwaters. These floodwaters of God's wrath by going into the ark. And now, in God's final new covenant, God's people, likewise, spiritually and eternally, are in Christ. to save us from God's future fiery wrath. Jesus is our ark. We must go through the door that He opens. He stands at the door and knocks. We can only go through Him, go in that door to escape God's future fiery wrath. We must be in Christ. That is God's only ark. So in the global flood, God didn't just save humanity, but all the varieties of animal life that man was given dominion over. So we see in verses 19 through 20, God's second command of the covenant, to save animal life. 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 should be male and female." You know, we just read over this verse, but today it stands out to us perhaps more and more, we Christians, that have to deal with this issue of transgenderism. Notice that even in the animal kingdom, there's only two genders. It's only man's depraved mind that comes up with more than two genders for human beings. Verse 20, of the birds according to their kinds and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come into you to keep them alive. Now this is a command here again. Same structure as what we see in the Ten Commandments. You shall bring, not just future tense, this is a command from the Lord. And notice the progression here in these two verses. It goes from general to more specific. Living thing. Flesh, both general terms, and then more specific, two genders, only two genders, male and female. And then it goes to the bird kinds, more specific, all the different kinds of birds. And then animal kinds, all the different animal kinds. And yes, this does include what is known in the modern vernacular as dinosaurs. And so, the biblical accounts of Noah's Ark and the flood have been attacked, of course. Well, you can't fit those huge dinosaurs on a boat even that size. Easy to resolve. Easy. You just bring smaller, not full-grown, terrible dragons, leviathans, behemoths. You don't have to bring the fully mature ones. They're too old. They eat more. And they don't have as much life in them to reproduce more of their own kinds, which was the point of preserving the animal kind. So yes, dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark. And then it finishes with the specifics of creeping things. And yes, that even includes cockroaches that seem to survive even a vast amount of water. All creeping things were taken on the ark." You know, there's a lot of confusion about animal kinds, bird kinds. That has arisen because of the way evolution has articulated what they see in the living kingdom. So it is helpful, and I encourage you to go to websites, and I've said this before, like Answers in Genesis or Institute of Creation Research. They have many, many articles on these topics written by excellent professors who've specifically studied these issues in their particular fields. These are scientists too. These aren't just Christian theologians. But they say, was every species on the ark? No. Species is a term used in the modern classification system. The Bible uses the term kind. The created kind was a much broader category than the modern term of classification species. The biblical concept of created kind probably most closely corresponds to the family level in the current taxonomy. A good rule of thumb is that if two things can breed together, they are of the same created kind. It is a bit more complicated, but this is a good quick measure of a kind. There can be a tremendous amount of variation within a created kind. For example, various types of dogs, such as wolves, dingoes, coyotes, jackals, and domestic dogs, they can often breed with one another. When dogs breed together, they get dogs, so there is a dog kind. So Noah, he's called by God to save the animal kinds and all the animal kinds and the varieties within those kinds that we see around today is because Noah obeyed God and those animal kinds, bird kinds, and creeping thing kinds came onto the ark and were preserved alive. So at this point, you might be wondering, how is he going to gather all these things into the ark? You know, dinosaurs, terrible lizards are big, but what about a large volume of animals? You know, really, Noah had the world's first zoo, if you think about it, preserving all the animal kinds on one boat. So you and I, like Noah, just need to obey what the Lord says to do instead of waiting for the how he's going to do it before we obey what he says to do. So Noah might have been wondering. I can't imagine how I'm going to get all these animals on this boat. But he constructed it and trusted that the Lord, based on the dimensions the Lord gave him, that they would all fit. But you can't just have human life and animal life on a boat and just they all come on. You need provisions, you need sustenance, you need food and lots of it. They would be on the boat for about a whole year. So consequently we have God's third command of the covenant. Food, in verse 21, also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them. Now we don't often think of this, the ark, it was a massive undertaking to build that huge structure. But it had to also been a massive, lengthy undertaking to accumulate all the food necessary to take care of eight people, 1,400 or so animal kinds, and perhaps approximately 4,000 animals on that boat for an entire year. Can you imagine the logistics of that? That also, in addition to building the ark, was a massive undertaking. So as we think of this large amount of food, this large amount of animals, even some large animals, all fitting on this wooden boat, as large as it was, It might be hard to picture such a thing. We can read about it. We can trust what the scripture says. We can go on the internet and go to the Ark & Connors website and see the pictures. But being there on that ark encounter, the life-size replica of the ark, is a whole other experience. And so, my wife and I and the kids and the family, we went to the ark encounter back in December, and stood in that ark, and you could see the design there, and how they could have feasibly stored food by the particular stalls, if you will, or chambers of these animals, and then chambers of food and other places, and ways to channel water through collecting rainwater from the roof, and then, of course, also for disposing animal waste. Because Noah was in the world's largest zoo, it probably would stink worse than a zoo if they didn't have a way to discard all the waste in it. So I would encourage you, if you ever get an opportunity, The reality really does settle in even more when you stand with your feet in that structure, the Ark Encounter, and see just how feasible all of this really is. It's absolutely stunning. Now to wrap up this message for today, we see verse 22 where it says, Noah obeyed all God's commands. Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him, not some, all that God commanded him. Now recall earlier in this chapter, a couple Sundays ago, Where it ended in verse 9, these are the generations of Noah. So it talks about the generations. Noah, then it states, Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. This isn't walking side by side physically with God. Obviously, this has to do with what this verse in 22 says, that he did all that God commanded him to do. That is how you walk with God. You strive to do all that God commands you to do. Which by the way, is evident fruit of your inclusion, your belief in the new covenant. Which God, Son, fulfilled the old covenant law that we all broke. And he went to the cross and took all of God's wrath poured out on him as our substitute. And then three days later, came out of that tomb, conquering death in the grave and evidence of the proof that God accepted the Lord Jesus' sacrifice for his bride. Then, of course, those of us who believe that, God takes us from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh, because we are regenerated spiritually. And you see a change, a heart, a desire to obey all that God commands us, commands you to do. Do you have that desire in your heart? It's not just praying to receive Jesus in your heart or accepting Jesus into your heart. I subscribe to a large church's email in this area just to see kind of what they're up to. And every week I see the same sort of statement. 15 people accepted Jesus in their heart last Sunday from all the church campuses. Next week, maybe it's a little more, a little less. But it's the same thing. Proof that Jesus is in your heart. Is evidence in your new desire to obey the Lord? I hope that is everyone in here. May God's grace reach you. May he call you to repentance and belief in the gospel, if not the case. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for this awesome first covenant. We see similarities. from a physical, fleshly perspective that carry over into the new covenant, the spiritual, which is eternal, the everlasting covenant that Jesus fulfilled for us. We love you and thank you, we the saints who've believed in that covenant. Thank you that Jesus is our ark, so to speak, to escape the fiery wrath to come. I pray if there are those in here who have not entered that ark of Christ, that You do a salvation work in them even at this moment. In Jesus' name, Amen.