You know, rainbows, people use them for everything these days. It's a really common symbol. But did you know that in the book of Genesis, God gave the rainbow for a very specific reason? Yeah, and I think people either don't know or they've forgotten. They've forgotten.
Let's read together today and find out what God said the rainbow was for.
Okay, today. On more than ink. We are recording this at the beginning of spring. Hey, it's spring. Finally, I'm Jim.
And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad that you're spending some of your spring, maybe, unless it's been a long time since we recorded this with us today. As we're looking at the book of Genesis. And, you know, I mentioned a couple times back that. One of my friends said, you know, he would be a believer if it weren't for the first 11 chapters of Genesis.
Because, I mean, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of amazing, very dynamic things in it, all the way from creation. And we're sort of at the end. We're going to look at chapter 9 today, 9 and 10. And when we get to Acts chapter 11, we start following the history of Abraham and the people who came from the nation of Israel.
So this is all... preemptive up to seeing Abraham chapter 11. Prehistory. Yeah, yeah.
So in a way, this is a way to focus down all of creation history down to one man and his family. And so that's what we're looking at today.
So we were on the ark last time. And uh it stopped and it drained. Right. Yeah.
Well, and God brought them out. God brought them out. Noah and his sons and all of the wives. And what had just happened at the end of last week, we had read how when they came out, Noah built an altar to the Lord and worshipped, and he offered whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. He smelled that aroma and promised that he would never again curse the ground because of man.
And he makes this beautiful promise that's actually kind of in a poem form at the end of chapter eight. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, my promise shall not cease. Yeah, sounds like a song. Yeah, but it's just this beautiful thing.
So that's what comes right before what we're going to be talking about today.
Well, and we were amazed then, and we will be again today about how unconditional God's commandment, not God's commandment, God's covenant demand is. And you would expect that when Noah got off the boat, that God would kind of come down pretty hard with stringent requirements for living on earth. Don't mess up like they had before, but it's not really like that. No, but we're going to see some interesting things today, both about Noah and about his sons. And I just want to remind you that back in chapter six, the Lord had said about Noah that Noah walked with God.
He was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Big deal. But at that time, the earth was filled and corrupt with violence. And so that whole generation died in the flood. But the writer of Hebrews, hundreds and hundreds of years later, says Abraham was an heir of righteousness which comes according to faith.
Faith.
So he shows up in that long list of people who had faith even though they had not seen. Yeah, Old Testament examples of faith and people who acted on that. And Noah acted by faith that what God was telling him was true about the coming judgment and about the flood and building the ark and the whole nine yards. He said, okay, I'll do it.
So here we come to what happened when they got off the ark. What did God say? They get out of the ark, chapter 9, verse 1. Here we go.
Okay. 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. Let me just finish this thought. And you be fruitful and multiply. Increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.
Yeah.
Boy, there's a lot in those few verses. Stepping out on dry ground, it's dry ground. We have kind of new working, I don't know, stipulations.
Well, some things are the same, and some things have different. Yeah, for instance, what's the same, be fruitful and multiply. We've seen that a couple of times already in Genesis and in chapter one, and I looked in chapter five.
So that's very consistent. And the fact that in that phrase, God blesses them. There's only two other places that God blesses mankind so far, and it's in Genesis 1 and Genesis 5. I know. That's a very positive view of human population growth.
God loves people, and He created the earth for their habitation. Yeah.
And he deliberately designed us to take part in the process of creating new beings. Rather than God just scooping dust up off the ground like he did with Adam and saying, here's another one, here's another one. He says, now you guys are going to be in the middle of this.
So that's a marvelous privilege in so many ways.
Well, that's one of the ways that we actually are created in the image of God, right? That we participate in becoming life givers. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and I forget who it was. A really wise Christian once said that if he had no other evidence at all for the existence of God, watching a baby being born would be enough. Yeah, I don't know who that was, but I would agree. Yeah, because I know that having given birth a few times. Yeah.
Yeah.
As opposed to Pascal, who said, if I didn't have any other proof, just the fact that I have an opposable thumb is enough for me. It depends on where you're coming from. Yeah, yeah.
So as he gets into verse 2, you know, he's talking about this relationship with the animals, the created animals. And that's kind of interesting. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens and everything that creeps around.
So it's an interesting stipulation because I wonder if that fear wasn't there before. I wonder if it wasn't also, because in the garden there seemed to be no fear of the natural world. But here it seems to be that after the flood, God is changing things.
So the animals now are going to be fleeing from humankind. They're not going to come near to you. Yeah.
Because we didn't see any kind of fearful interaction when Adam was naming the beasts. No. But here God says, well, they're going to fear you now.
So that's one thing. And then when he gets into verse three, he's talking about food all of a sudden. You know, before the flood and before this, food was vegetables. That's right. But now something's changed in verse three.
Everything that lives shall be food for you. In other words, you can go hunt. You can eat meat. Yes. But he qualifies that.
Don't eat meat with its life. That is the blood. Right. Because the blood symbolizes, symbolizes, represents the blood, the life. Represents life.
Yeah.
And that's a symbol God wants to preserve because he's making a point with the blood. In fact, ancient peoples knew that if an animal didn't have its blood in it anymore, it was dead. If you drained the blood out, it was dead. And so the common idea was: well, the life is in the blood. You remove the blood, there's no life in the animal.
So that was a really common conception and one God deliberately planted there so that when we get around to the time of sacrifice and the letting of blood, it would mean something. Because here's, I went back, if you look at Leviticus 17, God says this: you know, if anyone of the house of Israel or the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I'll set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people.
Now, listen to this. This is Leviticus 17:11. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your sins. Right. For it's the blood that makes atonement by the life.
So there's a specific picture that God's building here when we come to how do you deal with the issue of sin and offense to God? And he's going to say, well, it's going to have to be a life, and that's represented by the blood. There also was a parallel issue in pagan cultures of drinking the blood of an animal in order to gain its life, to gain its characteristics or something powerful about that animal.
So God's saying that this is off limits for you. The blood belongs to me. The life belongs to me. Right, right.
So the life is given by God and the life belongs to him. And they'll use it ceremonially at the altar. The other one thing I wanted to point out, and this goes by pretty fast if you're not watching, everything, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I call this the anti-roadkill. Yeah, don't eat dead stuff.
Don't eat dead stuff. Yeah.
And for a while, I thought I overthought that, but then I went searching around and found out that actually, no, if you go back to Leviticus 11, you know, this is where the laws are given. And if uh if any animal which you may eat dies, Don't touch it. Don't do anything with it. Don't even eat it. And if it touches your clothes, you got to wash your clothes off.
And then in Deuteronomy 14, he says, you shall not eat anything that has died naturally.
So if it's been dead, when you find it.
However, this is weird. In that same verse, he says, but you may give it to a sojourner who is within your towns.
So, like, you can't eat it, but if you have some stranger from outside your culture, you can feed it to them. What? That's an interesting question. I had never noticed that before until I went back studying that.
Okay, but remember that we are pre-Mosaic law. Very pre-built. God is laying down, eat the living things, right? Which means you have to kill them. That's right.
Which means you have to have respect for the life.
So that's pretty personal, right? Yeah, gets you involved in the loss of life. But while he's talking about blood in verse 5, he says, and your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. Yes, from the beasts and from people that don't kill, don't indiscriminately kill. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he'll require your blood if you spill blood wrongly.
So the blood still is the issue right here. And this is really in verse 5. It's sort of the institution of capital punishment in this new society after the ark. That particularly comes in in verse 6. Whoever sheds the blood of man by man, his blood shall be shed.
For God made man in his own image. Now, that's really interesting reasoning. That's interesting. God says, I'm the only one that has the right to take a life.
Now, I give you that through laws and courts and the... application of capital punishment was very carefully regulated in the law, in the Mosaic law, and it still is today. It still is. And that's, you know, God has made man in his own image. That's the backbone of Christian society, Jewish and Christian society, ever since this time about why do we not kill?
And we say, well, we can kill animals for food. We kill animals for a whole bunch of reasons, but you don't kill man because he's special from the rest of the created animals. He's made in God's image. And so that's the backbone of it. To this very day, that's the backbone of most anti-abortion discussions.
discussions. We don't do it because that child's made in God's image. And then God reiterates: now, be fruitful and multiply, and increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. He had already said that to them, but he says it again after saying, God made man in his own image. Kind of like bookends.
And he has given you the privilege of participating in making more men.
Well, let's push forward. We're at verse 8. You want me to read? Yeah, go ahead.
Okay. Well, then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you. Ooh, we're getting into covenants. And with every living creature that is with you, the birds, livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark, it's for every beast of the earth. I established my covenant.
By the way, start counting how many times verse 11, I established my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that's 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'll remember my covenant that's between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.
And the waters shall destroy, shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. Let's just stop right there for a second.
So that's interesting.
So, his covenant, and in a short phrase, what is his covenant?
Well, a covenant in the most stripped down version is an agreement between parties, right, to live in a particular kind of a relationship. I promise to I promise like I do. Like I will be this to you and you will be this to me. And if we break this promise, Oh, something's going to happen. There are consequences.
There are consequences. So that's kind of the barest form. The written version of this is a contract. But this is a covenant that God establishes. And that He takes the initiative.
And that He takes the initiative. He keeps, He gives the sign, He does everything. Yeah.
And what He's saying is that I'm never going to kill everyone with water again. Right. Okay, so we didn't read them all because you stopped short of the passage, but. Covenant is mentioned seven times in these few verses. Yeah, it's quite a lot.
And that's what this whole big paragraph is about. God says, now that we got the rules of the road for killing animals, I want to tell you, I'm making a deal with you, and it's my idea. I'm taking the initiative. And interestingly enough, it's unconditional. And it includes everybody and every animal.
Right. So, simply put, never again will there be a flood to take the lives of every creature on the land. That will not happen again. Wow. And just so as a sign.
As a sign, so you'll remember that that's my promise to you. And this is kind of like the equivalent of when a king would do a proclamation, write it on a piece of paper, and then they would put his stamp on it, a seal and the wax. This is his seal and the wax. This is his sign right here.
So, this is the sign of the covenant I'm going to make. And for you and the animals, I've set my bow in the cloud. Of course, that's the rainbow. It's the rainbow. Right.
Yeah.
But, you know, a sign is something you can look at and remember. Right. Oh, yeah, when I've forgotten, I can look at that and be assured that this agreement really was marked as valid. It was validated, right? Yeah.
So, and the sign also communicates it to both parties. Like, this is everybody can see it. We both, yeah. Which is really important because as mankind goes along and maybe as Noah goes along and there's failures in his life, which we will see soon, you'll wonder, gosh, did I cross the line? Is God going to wipe us out again?
And he can look at the next rainstorm and see the rainbow and go, no, that's the sign. Isn't that gracious? Very gracious.
Now, there's no indication that this is the first rainbow, although it could be. Could be. But, you know. God has so preempted any other use of the rainbow and said, this is the mark. Everybody and every animal on earth can see it.
And rainbows are interesting because you have to be at a particular. Perspective with the sun behind you and the water in front of you, right? In order to see the rainbow. It's an amazing thing, but it always appears. Yeah, and this time when we looked at this, I did more study on this because Because I always knew the rainbow was connected with God's covenant.
It was a visual sign to remind everyone of God's decision unilaterally not to do this again. But it turns out that in ancient literature, the bow is a weapon. Right. It's the battle bow. That's the same Hebrew word.
It's exactly the same word.
So this would be the same thing as God saying, I'm going to put a machine gun in the sky. Because it's a lethal device. It's terrifying, is the bow is. And so here's this bow. And the bow classically is put together with a warfare device, you know, when people are going to come and take your life and stuff like that.
It has to do with taking lives. And so it's interesting here that God uses an image of a warfare device that eventually, through pagan generations, has always made equivalent to the hostility of the gods. You know, here's the hostility of gods. And then often when they'd see constellations in the sky, they would see the ones that curve and say, that's a bow. That's God's hostility toward mankind, this bow.
But in this particular case, this bow is not aimed at the earth. And that's what's fascinating about this. It's aimed up, it's not aimed down.
So it's a way of saying, God's saying, my judgment toward you and my hostility towards you because of your sin. I'm hanging up my bow and I'm pointing it in the air rather than down. And in fact, when they would store bows, they would store them on a wall or something. Hunger. Like that.
So it's really a way of saying this very lethal thing that you equate with lethality, this weapon, this hostility from the gods. I'm hanging up my bow.
So it's really a it's a nice sign of peace. They would get it. They would instantly get it 'cause the bow was just that. It was just that.
Well, and that's kind of helpful to think about that that with the Noah we've started a new age. Right. Essentially, started over. Noah, in many ways, feels like a new Adam, even though the scripture doesn't call him that. But he kind of steps into the place of Adam.
He receives the same instructions: be fruitful and multiply. And yet, Noah goes forward in faith.
Well, we're going to see him make some mistakes coming forward. Right, right.
But God is so gracious and that the rainbow is visible by all peoples, all cultures, godly peoples, ungodly peoples. But the sign is unmistakably visible every time it rains. And like so much of God's creation, it doesn't really have a functional purpose. It's just beautiful. That's right.
That's right. So I looked at where else a rainbow shows up in Scripture. I only found two other places. One is in Ezekiel. in a description of the throne.
The throne, yeah, yeah. And the others are in Revelation. Again, this incredible, radiant, glowing rainbow of colors around the throne of God.
So it's, you know, I don't know quite what to make of that, but it's so beautiful and it's so unmistakable. It's so beautiful. It's so majestic. It's so encompassing. It's so universal on earth.
And it's a great sign of the mercy of God. And And his unconditional sense of not bringing death that way anymore. Let me just read you something. One of my favorite commentaries comes out of this guy, Dilish, and he said, talking about the bow here, he said, stretched between heaven and earth, it's a bond of peace between both. And spanning the horizon, it points to the all-embracing university of the divine mercy.
Is that great? It's really interesting. It's really well said. And that's translated from German.
Okay, so that's the sign that God will keep his promise, even though it will rain again, even though there might be localized floods. God will never again wipe the earth clean by a massive flood that will kill everything. And that set me thinking about Peter writing his second letter when he says, you know, it happened before God cleansed the earth by flood, but next time it's going to be by fire. Yes. So you actually should probably look up that passage in 2 Peter 3, 5 to 7, and verse 10.
Yeah.
So the rainbow is not an assurance that judgment will not come every day. No, judgment is coming. It's coming, but just not by water. Not by water. Yeah, not by water.
And it signals a period of time where God's going to be. And not for not Universally forgiving, let's say, but there's kind of a time available, a time of mercy. A time of mercy, yeah, which is that that's what we're in right here.
Well, let's finish the rainbow thing. I stopped before 16.
So at 16, so when the bow is in the clouds, this is still God speaking. When the bow is in the clouds, I'll see it and 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 a sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. Actually, the rainbow does have a purpose. It's a reminder of a covenant that was made between God and mankind.
Yeah.
Which actually harkens back now to the end of chapter eight, when God said, While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. Right? I will be faithful. God keeps his promises. God keeps his promises and he gives us a reminder.
Now, it's not like, you know, when it says, I'll remember, it's not like God forgot and woke up one morning and said, Oh, that's right. I better restrain myself. No, it's like when you refer back to a covenant, you tell yourself, No. We made this choice. We wrote this down on paper.
We signed it. It's done. It's there. We commemorate it. Yeah.
So remembering isn't having forgotten it. It's a matter of keeping it in the front. Keeping it current. Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'll remember. And again, it's another assurance to mankind. God will look at it from his side of things, from heaven, and say, no, I made this promise.
So I'm not going to flood him again. Seven times he refers to covenant. Word covenant. Covenant, covenant, covenant, covenant, covenant.
So very complete. He says, three times it's a sign. Twice I'll establish it. Twice I'll remember it. And then in the middle of that, he says it's an everlasting covenant.
Did you get it? Yeah, covenant, covenant, covenant. Again, just to, I don't want to beat this to death, but notice that God's the one who's taking the initiative. This is not Noah begging for mercy going forward or anything like that. Like, God, let's never do that again.
This is God saying, here's the deal now. We have a covenant. And just so that you remember and I remember, here's a sign in the heavens. That'll remind you of that. This is God taking all the initiative to present and cause mankind to remember his mercy.
Okay. And the God keeps his promises. Yeah.
How reassuring is that, right? Oh, there's the rainbow. This rain is not going to last. The sun will shine again. And I might mention too, I mean, historically, the nation of Israel, who were not really a maritime culture, They had an inordinate fear of deep waters.
And everyone did. And it was symbolic of where you could put something that could never be retrieved. And it would kill you if you fell into it. It was overpowering. Yeah.
So that was a constant reminder that one time that had happened, but God's not going to do that again.
Well, let's finish this out. What do you say?
So I want you to take for us verse 18.
Okay, 18 and 19. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan.
Now that's in parentheses. And that's important. That's important. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these, the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Wow.
So it's kind of like driving home. Everyone died. Yes. And God is starting over with this remnant that he had preserved alive in the ark. And so these three sons are going to repopulate the earth.
Yeah, and as we're going to see, even though People came through the flood. The nature of mankind also came through the flood. Right. Right. Right.
It didn't just kill, it didn't kill all the bad people. Even though Noah walked with God, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the three of them have unique signatures that end up being written on the history of mankind, which we're going to follow up on. Yeah, we're going to look at that next week. It's very interesting. And the significance of Ham being called out in the middle here.
Why does he show up in the middle of the list?
Well, he's the father of Canaan. That's like the writer here, which traditionally we understand is Moses, is setting up for us some more important information about Ham and Canaan.
Well, and in the history and life of the nation of Israel, Canaan is a big deal.
So that's why we're going to he wanted to make sure you caught that as we start talking about nations that come from these three sons because Canaan is a particular one Jewish people would be interested in hearing about.
So technically, they're all related through Noah. All related.
So, yeah. What's common to man? And if you're wondering, I mean, I'll just give you a preview. Ham himself, coming out of Ham is Egypt. Egypt comes out of Ham.
The Philistines, remember Goliath, they come out of Ham. The Assyrians, who were the ones that came in and did the and took away the northern kingdom of Israel, they come from Ham. Babylon comes from Ham.
So these are all very classic. Enemies and antagonisms toward Israel through the Old Testament, and they all seem to be coming out of Ham. And in particular, Canaan has a special role in those antagonizers.
So we're going to see that as we push forward because he wants to tell us more about what happens with these three sons. But you can read ahead. You can read ahead. Yeah, and we stopped before the end of chapter 9, so you can see where it takes off from here. But we're going to spend some time next time looking at these three sons.
But before we start looking at the three sons and their descendants, A very strange interlude happens that we'll look at first time when we come back. And that interlude is with Noah, who's now called not the man of the ark, but the man of the soil. Yeah, so we'll see that when we come back.
So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we'll continue this amazing look into the beginnings of all mankind and the history of all of it. And we'll do that here again on Morning. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org.
And while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note.
Okay, so you said you read the word covenant how many times? Seven times. That's a lot of emphasis. Yeah, what a great encouragement, too, that here's God taking the initiative to make a promise to mankind. And making it visible to everybody through the rainbow.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, let's read on next time. We'll see you here. On More Than Ink. Bye. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
