A New World Order

And we'll almost get finished with chapter 9, okay?

! Even though you have an outline that really goes all the way through the chapter.! And I'll just give you a kind of bare bones outline for the chapter. I operate according to outline.

In fact, just to give you a window into my sermon preparation, other than the initial studying of the text to find out exactly what it means, the very first major thing I do is make an outline.

I learned that way back when I was in college, and certainly learned that in my seminary days, that you can't go anywhere until you have an outline. And so that's what I've given you here.

And so if you want to make some notes, kind of fill in some of what I'm going to say, then you obviously are free to do that. Chapter 9 is an interesting chapter, and I've entitled it, you may see that on the outline, A New World Order with an Old World Problem.

And really, the chapter can be divided very neatly those two ways, in those two segments.

You have a word about this new world that Noah and his sons and their wives, Noah's wife, are now experiencing after they've come out of the ark.

And it's quite a different place. And so here in chapter 9, we have a description of the new world, but then we also have something that is said about the old world.

New world and the old world. And so, you know, a new world order, we're going to see that in this chapter, which, you know, where pretty much everything has changed, even though we're not going to see a description necessarily of that.

But Noah's in a new world, and everything is different now. I don't know that we can even begin to realize just how different the world was in Noah's eyes from what it was prior to the flood.

But then we're also going to see the old world problem. And what is that? It's sin. And that hasn't gone away, has it? In fact, even before the chapter's out, finished, this chapter after the flood is over, and Noah and his family are saved, you know, so graciously and powerfully from God's judgment upon the sinful world, even before the next chapter's over, we're back to sin again.

And we're going to see that here tonight. So in that sense, nothing has changed. In one sense, everything has changed for Noah. The world is totally different. But in this other sense, it hasn't changed at all.

There's still the depravity of humankind. And so I guess we could think of it this way. Noah, in a sense, is a new Adam in this new world order.

I think we could consider that, though in a spiritual sense, Jesus is the new Adam. What we lost in the first Adam, we gain in the new Adam, and that's Jesus Christ.

But in the sense of now a new beginning for the world after the flood, Adam is kind of a new Adam. Or rather, Noah is kind of a new Adam. But not the Adam prior to the fall.

He's not that Adam, of course. We're not starting all over in that sense, with a perfect man and a perfect wife. But Noah still represents the Adam of the fall.

Even though Noah is a righteous man, the Bible tells us, and even though Noah and his family found grace in God's sight, that did not change the fact that they were still a part of a fallen race.

And they were sinners. And that's going to become quite apparent before we get finished with the chapter. All right, so we're going to look at the two worlds. First, the new world. In verses 1 through 19, really 17, I guess, because I'm going to kind of let 18 and 19 go over into the new world, kind of introduces us to the, rather, the old world.

All right, so the new world. We have here, in these verses, five features, I guess we could call them, five features of this new world that chapter 9 describes for us.

Five features of it. All of these relate to man, mankind. And so the first one is this. Something is said here about man's dominion.

Man's dominion, and that we see in verses 1 and 2. Man is to have dominion over the creation, over all of creation, just like before, just like with Adam and Eve.

That has not changed, in a sense, though God is now going to reissue this reality, this duty, really, more than a duty, it's a blessing.

He's going to restate it for Noah, here in verse 1. Look at verse 1. So God blessed Noah and his sons. He blessed them.

How did He do that? He said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. All right, so this is the blessing that God has placed upon Noah.

To be fruitful. Fruitfulness is the blessing. Now, I know in our day, that's not necessarily viewed as a blessing. Fruitfulness. But that just tells you how far we've come from God's original plan.

But this is the blessing. Be fruitful. And so, God blessed Noah's family with fruitfulness, just like He did Adam and Eve. And so they would be blessed with many children.

That's what we're to get from this. And again, the same blessing He gave to Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 1, verse 28. I'll read part of that here in a minute, but just remember, this is the new world.

And Noah is, in one sense, the new Adam. And what God said to the first Adam, He is now restating to the new Adam, which is Noah.

And so the blessing of fruitfulness. Be fruitful and multiply. And with the blessing, though, He gives a command. Because there's a command in here as well.

Or a duty, we might call it. But it really is in the form of a command. Be fruitful. This is a command. Be fruitful and multiply and do what? Fill the earth.

That's what Noah and his family, they're to do. Now, not all by themselves. They're the start of it. You know, and... But this is the command that is given to Noah and his family, and by extension to all those who come out of them or come after them.

All right? Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. And again, this is the exact same command He gave to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1, 28. Let me read it to you. This is back in Genesis 1, 28.

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Same thing. Now, He's going to say more to Adam and Eve, and we're going to discover that the same thing He says to them, He says to Noah as well.

We'll get to that here in just a minute. The idea here is that the design of God in this new world order was, in this sense, the same as His original design for the old world, or the original world, the first world, the design that He expressed through Adam and Eve.

He told Adam and Eve to fill the earth. Fill it. That is to, literally, to spread their offspring over the entire world. Now, by the way, that's another evidence that civilization was not just simply congregated in one little geographical area, and therefore God only sent a flood to one little isolated geographical area.

He sent a flood to the entire world because by the time of the flood, man had spread over the entire world. That's exactly what God commanded to happen through Adam and Eve.

And then, so now here, with the new world, after the flood, He told Noah and his sons to do what? Same thing. Fill the earth. To spread their offspring over the entire world and not some specific geographical area.

By the way, as we go a little further in Genesis, we're going to discover that man had a little problem doing that, and God had a remedy for it, and that was the tower of battle, you remember, and we'll get to that sometime on down the line.

But now, also, you need to see here that with God's blessing of fruitfulness and His command to fill the earth, God also commanded Noah and all of his offspring to have dominion over the earth.

That's why I said what we have here is man's dominion. And this is what verse 2 is all about. Look at verse 2. It's interesting, really, when you think about it.

And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth. Now, let me just stop there a minute and say, make a statement about what this implies.

The implication is that this fear, this dread of animals toward man was apparently something new.

That it wasn't there before the flood. Which, by the way, would have made things a lot easier for Noah when they got all the animals together on the ark. If there was no fear between the two, no fear at all.

In fact, I think it's likely, I think you could make a case that even animals were vegetarians prior to the flood. But now, things are going to be different.

The relationship's going to be different. There's going to be fear of you on the part of the animal kingdom and dread. And the very mentioning of it suggests that this is some new thing in this new world order.

And he says, this fear, this dread will be upon every bird of the air on all that move on the earth and on all the fish of the sea. And then this statement, this is key, they are given into your hands.

Or into your hand. Singular, same idea. They are given into your hand. Now that statement means dominion.

Man has dominion over the creation. Authority. Rule. Of course, obviously with that dominion, that authority, comes great responsibility, of course.

we could make all kinds of statements about that. But the point is, man is to have dominion. And by the way, this too is what God blessed Adam and Eve with. Remember. Genesis 128.

Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the air. So, same thing there.

And God is renewing that once again. Alright, so first, man's dominion. Then we have something here, said about man's diet. Man's diet.

And, I've kind of mentioned this a couple of times over our study, but verses 3 and 4 reveal an addition to man's diet.

Now, again, not everyone agrees with this, but I believe this is real clear from Scripture. That prior to the flood, people were vegetarians.

They were vegetarians. And we get that from a couple of places in Scripture. Genesis 129, for example, and God said, See, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed.

To you, it shall be for food. And then, in Genesis 2.16, the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden, you may freely eat. Nothing is said, ever, implied, or explicitly, about man eating meat.

It's always about the herbs, the seed, the tree. I believe man was vegetarian. Now, after the flood, God apparently, I think, gave permission to eat meat.

And so, you know, whichever side, some people might fall on, they might say, Well, I agree with you, Pastor, that man was vegetarian before the flood, and he's supposed to be today, too. I mean, those who would argue that point, that we weren't created to eat meat.

You ever heard that argument? Maybe somebody believed that. I don't know, but that's all right if you want to believe that. And then, on the other side of it, to say, Well, no, no, you know, they were meat eaters before the flood, and we're after.

And yet, it seems pretty clear that there's a distinction here. And part of it is from what has been said, recorded in Scripture prior to the flood, and part of it has to do with what is said right here in verse 3, because apparently after the flood, God gave man permission, this for the first time, permission for man to eat meat, which, by the way, may have been necessitated by the change in the growth of vegetation on the planet, which was dramatically different after the flood and so, it could be that God gave permission to eat animals or eat meat to supplement the diet, because man cannot survive just on the vegetation that grew.

You know, it's just a possibility. Verse 3 says this, Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I've given you all things even as the green herbs.

That is, in a sense, even as I before gave you the green herbs, vegetation, now I'll give you something in addition to that. That is, everything that moves and lives shall be food for you.

You can eat meat. Now, God does give one restriction here. In verse 4, You shall not eat flesh with its life. That is, its blood.

And it's been variously translated, but I think the significance of that is really twofold. On the one hand, a very practical reason for this restriction in a medical sense, in a physical sense.

On the other hand, I think it is given for a spiritual sense because of God's plan and the significance of blood when it comes to the atonement.

Let's think about it on the physical sense. the restriction not to eat anything with the life in it, with its blood. Life is in the blood. That restriction guarantees that life has indeed departed from the animal.

So you're not just grabbing, you know, that little rabbit off the ground and while it's squealing, you're just chewing it to pieces, you know. Which, very repulsive to us.

I don't know. But it does guarantee that the life is gone because the life is in the blood and the blood is to be drained.

Now, not that you can ever get all the blood out, but you're not, and two, the prohibition also extends to the drinking of blood as well.

Which would not be a healthy thing to do. And since disease, they say disease always shows up in the blood. Man would be more prone to sickness if God permitted him to consume the blood of diseased animals.

So there's some practical management, and probably several others that we might be able to discover. But there is a spiritual sense or understanding of this restriction.

Leviticus 17, 11 says, for the life of the flesh is in the blood. That's exactly what we have here in Genesis 9. But it's not talking about eating, it's talking about something else.

He said, I have given it to you, that is the blood, given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls. For it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul.

I just think that the blood of animals was to be offered as sacrifice for atonement for sin.

And of course that prefigured Christ who would shed his blood. And without the shedding of blood there is no remission to sin. We know the significance of blood when it comes to sacrifice to atonement.

There is no atonement apart from it. And so I think the idea is that God did not want blood to be cheapened, to become a common thing, just be a part of our diet, you know.

And it would have become just a very common thing, you know, if God had permitted man to include the blood as part of his diet.

All right, so I have a couple things to chew on there. No pun intended. All right, so we are considering the new world order, man's dominion in this new world, man's diet, and then third, man's dignity.

Man's dignity, verses 5 and 6. His dignity or his sanctity, the sanctity of human life, the dignity of human life, above all other life is the point he's going to make here, verse 5.

Surely for your life blood I will demand a reckoning. From the hand of every beast I will require it. And from the hand of man, from the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man.

Of course, you know he's talking about the taking of a human life. Murder. And God is saying that I will require, I demand a reckoning.

Life for a life is the idea here. even if it's an animal that has killed a human being. So, what we have here is the dignity of human life, the sanctity of human life, as one of the pillars of this new world order.

God demands that the willful, deliberate killing of innocent human beings must be avenged. Must be. That's what he demands.

Whether by an animal or by another human being. You say, well, that's interesting, you can buy an animal. Well, we do that today, don't we? We should. But the idea is that animals should be put to death if they kill a human being because that violates the dominion of man, which God has ordained.

And God will require their death. death. But also, of course, by a human being, of course. Now, later on, when God issues his Ten Commandments through Moses, he, of course, states in the Sixth Commandment, thou shalt not kill.

Now, I purposefully have quoted from the King James because I want you to pay attention to the word kill, which, by the way, that translation has led many over the years to come up with all kinds of reasons why, well, we should not go to war, why we should not ever kill a man, that if we go to war and, you know, in the defense of our country or someone's freedom, we kill someone, that that's violating God's command, to also the idea of capital punishment, being unlawful according to God's commandment.

The word kill is a very poor translation, and my apologies to the King James translators. It really should be murder, should be the word murder.

There are three words in the Hebrew that can be translated killed. The one that's used here can be translated killed, and so I guess in that sense the translator of the King James were not wrong necessarily.

But the word that is here is a word that generally means murder, and not just kill. Now, murder is the same as killing somebody, but it's the intent and all of that, of course, make that difference.

There are two other words in the Hebrew text, Hebrew vocabulary, that means specifically just killing, killing, well, I say specifically, in a general sense, killing, that do not ever refer to murder, which is something different.

Now, Moses did not use those two words, either of those two words. He used this word that generally means to murder. All right, so if those have a problem with that, should consider that.

Now, the reasons for this command, I'm talking about as it's given to us here in verse 6 of chapter 9, the reason for the command he gives us, verse 6, whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man.

There's the reason for this command. And there are a couple of things that are kind of interesting about this. In the first place, this is the first reference, even though the word government is not here, this is the first reference to it, where he says, man, by man, his blood shall be shed.

And so, it will be man that will administer the justice. And this is, I think, a reference to government, where man is organized and governs himself and exacts justice, as God prescribes.

And also, since the execution of a murderer is ordained by God, and that's what we have here. It's ordained by God. In fact, it's commanded by him, which really is the same thing.

Since that's the case, then, you know, capital punishment is not a violation of God's law. not a violation of the sixth commandment.

Well, there are many who would vehemently argue that point. God is clearly ordaining and commanding it. And he's saying, whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed.

Shall be. That's capital punishment. And he gives the supreme reason for the image of God. In the image of God, he made man. This is a act against God himself.

Murder is. And by the way, I would throw this in there, too, because you probably have heard this argument. The argument is often made that capital punishment is Old Testament.

And say, well, you know, they would say to what I just said a moment ago, well, you're right about that, but that's Old Testament. Not New Testament. And so sometimes people will typically say, you know, we now live in the age of grace.

We're in New Testament times. So the Old Testament law of life for life, that's no longer in effect. Have you ever heard that argument before? Well, you should know that God gave this ordinance at the inauguration of the new world, immediately right after the flood, a long time before the law was given.

And so I think he intended for it to be in effect for all ages to the end of time. And so some people just have to deal with that.

All right, man's dominion, man's diet, man's dignity, and then fourth, man's duty. And this is kind of a repeat of something he's already said. Verse 7, And as for you, Noah, your family, be fruitful and multiply.

Bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it. Now, I want to throw this in here because it's kind of interesting. The word multiply means to swarm.

I think it almost makes us think that we're like insects. We're swarming all around the entire world. But that's the idea. Cover it all. Just cover it like a swarm of bees would their honey, their hive, what do you call it?

The honeycomb. And by the way, God placed no limit on that. We hear an awful lot about population control, you know. We've been hearing about China for a number of years, you know, the restriction on two kids, that's it.

If you have any more, they'll be aborted. And that's China today. Great, great humanitarian nation, right? And yet, America is just a few steps away from that.

And it may happen sooner than you think. God, there's no restriction on how many people live on this planet. And as I think I mentioned, I think there's plenty of evidence to suggest that there were many, many, many, many more people living on this planet prior to the flood than are today.

And we're worried about overpopulation. And God doesn't say anything. He just says swarm this earth. And we can trust God with the rest of it.

One final thing about this new world order, that is man's divine promise. And God's promise, or we could use the word covenant, which probably would be the better word since it appears in the text.

His covenant is stated in verses 8-11. Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, And as for me, behold, I established my covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is 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 established my covenant with you. Never again, here's the statement of the covenant, 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. So in effect, God is saying to Noah and his family, he's saying, this is what I want you to do. Be fruitful, multiply, spread the population of man over the entire face of the earth.

That's what I want you to do, and this is what I'm going to do. I make a covenant with you and your descendants after you to never ever again shall there be a flood to destroy this earth.

Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. Do you think that that was good news for them to hear? That seems far removed for us, you know, but this is good news.

This really would free them from the fear, constant fear, of another global judgment with a flood. And God is promising, I'm not going to do that.

So every time you see a dark cloud in the sky, you don't have to be panicking, gathering together some wood to make another ark. I will never do that again.

You can be sure of that. It's my covenant with you, and that would allow them to obey God with a confidence of his protection and his security.

And then he gives a visible sign of it. Verses 12 and 13, God said, this is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations from you on.

I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Now, this is the first rainbow, the very first one.

And, I mean, clearly, this is something God did. Now, whether he at that moment created the laws that govern rainbows, I don't think he had to do that.

I don't think there's necessarily any reason why we have to believe it that way, but we do know that this is the first one. Because he said, here's the sign of it. I set my rainbow there in the sky.

But, you do know because of the atmospheric conditions that are now different now than they were prior to the flood. Prior to the flood, you know, we had this canopy around.

It didn't rain. All the moisture came up from below. And so, the science that governs rainbows and the appearance of rainbows didn't exist prior to the flood.

God created those things and now they exist. And so, here on the day one, you know, after the flood is over, God lets them see his promise.

And so, every time they look and see the rainbow, it is a reminder of his covenant, his promise that he'll never break it. Verse 14, he says, and it shall be when I bring a cloud over the earth.

It's like he's saying, Noah, just expected there will be clouds coming. All right? Don't get nervous about it. That the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud and I will remember my covenant which is between me and you.

And by the way, it's interesting, it's almost as if God is saying the rainbow is there for him as well. Not that God ever forgets anything. So, therefore, he didn't have to remember anything. But he said it in this way.

When that rainbow, appears, I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

The rainbow shall be in the cloud and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. And 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.

I know it's kind of repetitious the way it's written. I mean, we're, you know, putting this deep into your mind and heart. And so now, you know, we quite often see rainbows, don't we?

And I like to see rainbows. I don't often think this, but we ought to think this, we should see the rainbow and praise our God that He's a covenant-keeping God.

And He keeps all of His covenants. principles. Not just this one, but those that are supremely important to us. Thank you.