God’s Gracious Covenant - Gen. 8:20-9:17

Introduction

Last week, we looked at the hope that came from God initiating a new beginning for creation. God is a God of life and He has come to bring new life to the world.

And we ended and saw that this hope led Noah to respond with perseverance and with worship.

This week, we will see God’s response to the sacrifice that Noah has offered after exiting the ark.

Read Genesis 8:20-9:17

Genesis 8:20–9:17 (ESV)

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

“Whoever sheds the blood of man,

by man shall his blood be shed,

for God made man in his own image.

And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said, “This is 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. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Here we are seeing God’s covenant with Noah and with all of creation.

What is a covenant?

A covenant is a promised agreement. Many of the promises God makes are conditional on how the people respond to His promise. But there are certain covenants God makes in which He promises something without regard to what the other party is going to do. This is one of those promises.

God Promises Mercy (Gen. 8:20-22)

Mercy is the withholding of what one deserves. Noah sacrificially makes a burnt offering

Notice that this is especially pleasing to the Lord.

Noah did not initiate this offering. God initiated this offering when He instructed Noah to bring seven pairs of every clean animal.

God made provision for the sacrifice long before Noah built the boat.

But Noah, in faith, sacrificed some of all the clean animals, which are now endangered of extinction, as a sacrifice.

Noah knew that if it were not for the grace of God, then he would have died along with the rest of the world.

Noah was not saved because of his righteousness. He was made righteous because he was saved, but he was a sinner just like the rest of the world. It was by God’s mercy and grace that saved Noah.

So Noah offers this sacrifice on behalf of his sin and that of his family.

But God is pleased with this sacrifice and pronounces mercy upon all creation.

why do we call this His mercy? Because look at what God says about humanity.

Genesis 8:21 (ESV)

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.

Even though the intention and inclination of man’s heart is only evil, yet God will not bring another worldwide flood.

Now, God does bring judgment upon sinners, but whereas He could bring an immediate and swift judgment upon all mankind, in Mercy, God withholds immediate judgment and allows mankind to continue in spite of their sin and rebellion.

And think of the comfort this declaration would have brought to Noah. Noah knows the sin that still lays within his own heart.

In fact, we are going to see a dark time in Noah’s life next week at the end of chapter 9.

Can you imagine what he would have thought the next time he saw a dark cloud rolling in? We see a dark cloud and we hope for rain. But for Noah, this would have set off a major PTSD as he would recall the events of the previous ten months and the death that he experienced. To hear God declare that He would not destroy the earth by a flood again brought great hope and ease to Noah. It would ease the fears he might have felt.

God is merciful!

But just because God doesn’t exercise immediate judgment against sin, does not mean that He will not judge sin.

This does not mean that there will not be a final judgment against sin. “While the earth remains…” God will not bring forth immediate judgment, but there is in this statement an understanding and assumption that an end is coming where God will bring judgment against all sin. But He is patient and long suffering.

Let us not presume upon the mercy of God. Just because God does not bring about an immediate judgment against sin does not mean that He will not ever judge sin. Just because He is displaying mercy now does not mean that we are living in right relationship with Him.

His mercy is displayed so we might have a chance to turn and repent from our sin and turn back to Him.

God Provides Grace (Gen. 9:1-7)

Whereas mercy is the withholding of what is deserved, Grace is the giving of something undeserved. Two sides of the same coin, but each unique and distinct.

Common grace vs. Saving grace

Here at the beginning of chapter nine, we see God displaying grace towards all of creation.

We have to make a distinction between common grace and saving grace.

Saving grace is only given to those who by trusting in the finished work of Christ on their behalf receive that grace by faith.

Common grace, however, is the grace that God shows to all mankind whether they have chosen to trust and believe or not.

Here we see God’s common grace displayed for all humanity, regardless of their faith and relationship with God.

God gives the grace of human flourishing.

God echoes once again the blessing He bestowed upon Adam and Even in the first chapter.

Genesis 1:28 (ESV)

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Instead of delighting in the destruction of the human race, God desires and delights in the growth of the human race and population. God is a God of life and wants to see humanity grow and flourish.

And regardless of whether one is a follower of Christ or not, it is possible for people to experience a good marriage and the blessing of children in their lives. This is common grace.

This blessing to be fruitful and multiply continues on to today. Today God is still calling for holy, God glorifying, marriages that will produce offspring and children who will grow to know and love the Lord.

As a church, we seek to fulfill this blessing as we find ways to partner with parents and to minister to families to help them grow in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Awana will be starting back this week where our goal is to help boys and girls come to know, love, and serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

We also fulfill this blessing as we as God’s people fulfill the Great Commission to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teach them to obey all that Christ has commanded us. This is not a burden to us, this is part of God’s blessing of flourishing upon both the church and humanity!

God gives the grace of restraint and boundaries.

A Major Difference - Dread of the animals against mankind and the allowance for animals as food for humanity.

Humanity would no longer be able to subdue and take dominion of the created order. Yes, we do take dominion over creation in certain ways. We invent, we are creative, we construct and design.

However, we do not have full authority and dominion like Adam and Eve had over the created order. Animals, instead of coming to Adam and Eve, now run in fear of man. And our dominion is now marked by death and consumption rather than by care and cultivating.

It might be that with the changes in the environment that man now needs more than what the plants are able to give?

But as commentator Richard Phillips writes,

It seems more likely that the point is simply to show how sin changes our relationships. What sin did to the bond between man and the creatures it continues to do today in marriages, families, and communities. Therefore, whenever the unbelieving world declares new freedoms to engage in sin, mankind receives not an increase of liberty but the multiplication of division and strife.

Therefore, God gives the grace of boundaries and restraint.

This is actually a common practice for God to demonstrate undeserved grace to His people and then to set the boundaries and expectations for living within the covenant He has made.

When God saved the Israelites, He saved them by grace. But He proceeded to give them the law at Mt. Sinai as a grace to show them what it meant to live within this new covenant.

Even in Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council discussed how all people are saved by God’s grace alone through faith alone, but then instruct the new believers of the gracious boundaries God has given to us to know how to live.

Acts 15:19–20 (ESV)

Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.

First, respect the life of animals.

God gives boundaries as to how to treat the animals that are now being given as food to man.

While we can now eat steaks and bacon and shrimp, we are not to eat it with the blood within it.

We are first to see that the animals are not simply to be treated however we want, but we are to see them as creatures of our holy God.

And the blood within the creature is a sign of life. I believe we are getting a foreshadowing of what God will be doing through the sacrificial system. There is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood because the blood carries with it the life of the creature. The wages of sin is death so when the blood is shed upon the altar, the payment for sin is being given. So the blood belongs to God alone and not to us.

Therefore, there needs to be a respect for the blood and for the life of animals. While we are permitted to hunt and use animals for food, there should be a holy respect for the life of the animals and they should not be casually killed or destroyed.

This is a reminder to us that all life comes from the hand of God Himself.

Second, to regard the image of God with a higher priority.

We must see that the life of humans are greater and carry with it a greater penalty for violating the life of fellow humans.

Man and woman are created in the image of God, so the taking of a human life is an offense against God Himself.

God is responding to the violence that took place prior to the flood beginning with Cain and Abel, and with Lamech and his cold blooded murder of a fellow man and all the other violence that took place.

God is prohibiting all forms of illegitimate life taking. This includes everything from murder to suicide and from abortion to euthanasia. As believers we must fight for life from conception in the womb to natural death.

We need to understand that the taking of human life, is an act, not simply of homicide, but of fratricide. Because we are all descended from Noah and ultimately from Adam, we are all related and connected in some way, so we are all called to care for our brothers and sisters, our fellow neighbors regardless of where they live.

So the penalty is so great because the value of human life is so great. To take a human life is to incur the sentence of death. It is because of both the value of the life that was unjustly taken and to deter other acts of violence against people. God has given the common grace of government for the good and flourishing of humanity. This does not mean that government does everything right or well, but it is a grace because without some form of order, we would be subject to anarchy and death.

This is why we need to be a people of life. We as God’s people must seek to fight for life in any and every way we possibly can. Just as slavery was rightly abolished because it was viewing someone made in the image of God as property, so we must do what we can to fight against the evil act of abortion, even prayerfully seeing it completely abolished. We also need to be a people who seek to serve and minister to those in need, whether its the single mother who is afraid there are no other options, to be a friend to the lonely, to honor the elderly.

It also speaks to how we treat one another. The way we treat each other as believers shows how we view the image of God in each other. We can gossip and back bite when someone offends us or disagrees with us or we can choose to forgive and lift them up in spite of our hurt feelings.

Jesus, in His sermon on the mount talks about how it is not just physical murder, but when we are angry and hate our brother, we are guilty of murder. Let us so highly value the life of our fellow man that we fight against murder in all its forms, not just the forms we believe we are not guilty of.

God Produces the Sign of His Covenant (Gen. 9:8-17)

This promise is given to all of creation.

This is a common grace that God is bestowing upon all people, whether believers or unbelievers and whether we have stayed within the boundaries of grace God has given or not. God has given us His gracious boundaries, but also understands that because of our sinful hearts, we are not going to stay within these boundaries. Regardless, God is making a covenant with all of creation regardless of its response to Him and His grace.

When we see the rainbow in the sky, it serves as a reminder to us that God has not forgotten His promise. In fact, God even says that He will see it and remember. Not that God ever forgets anything, but it is a sign that He sees and recognizes the promise that He has made to all of creation.

The rainbow is a common grace given to all of humanity to remind us of God’s longsuffering patience and mercy towards us.

However, this promise is pointing to the hope of a saving grace for those, who like Noah, live by faith.

The bow in the sky…

God has hung up His bow, a weapon of war, His own weapon because He will not blot out man by a flood again.

But notice, when we see the bow in the sky, where the bow is pointing. The bow is not pointing towards the earth. It points upward towards the heart of heaven itself.

The next time God unleashes a flood of His wrath it will be directed to the heart of heaven, Jesus Himself.

The bow is a reminder that not only will God not pour out His wrath upon the earth again before the end, it is also a foreshadowing of where His wrath will be directed for all those who place their faith in Him, Jesus Himself.

And as Bible Teacher Jen Wilkin points out, what is the rainbow made of? The combination of sunlight and rain. Just as the sunlight and rain mix together to form the bow in the sky, so the combination of God’s mercy and God’s wrath meet together at the cross where God’s mercy is poured out for humanity when Jesus willingly stands in our place and bears the wrath of God upon Himself.

in the meantime the rainbow is a sign of God’s promise to not destroy the earth by a flood again. It is not simply a promise to His covenant people, it is a promise to all people.

This is His common grace that He allows the sun and the rain to fall upon both the righteous and the wicked.

it is also grace to us as His people to remember every time we see the bow, that God in His mercy is giving us more time to share the message of hope and salvation with those who so desperately need to hear it.

We get to be a priesthood of believers as we lift up and represent our neighbors to God who can save them, and as we represent and share of the One True God with those who do not know Him.

We get to partake in the grace of God both by how we raise our families in the grace and knowledge of God, but also in how we are spiritually fruitful and multiply as we go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.

We get to display the goodness and holiness of God to the world around us as we submit to God’s gracious boundaries set for us as His people.

In the words of the hymn we are about to sing, “Let others see Jesus in you! Keep telling the story, be faithful and true, let others see Jesus in you!”