A Noahic Covenant

As we take our seats, let's open to Genesis chapter nine. Genesis chapter nine as we continue our series on biblical worldview entitled the Way We Think, and we're looking at the first eleven chapters of Genesis and the way that it lays a foundation for biblical worldview, for the way we think about all things. We continue that here after the flood, with the covenant that God makes with Noah, will concentrate mainly on verses eight to seventeen, but we'll start there at verse one to give us context. And lest Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So we have a repetition of the command earlier from chapter one, the repetition of the command that we have at the beginning of the cultural mandate. 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 again in the first two chapters, before the fall, even there was this symbiotic relationship between man and everything else, and he said that we should be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, exercise dominion. Now at the regime of this command, there's the idea that all of the animals will fear us Verse three. Every moving thing that lives upon that lives shall be food for you. Again, remember in the beginning he said he gave him every plant for food, and he gave the animals every plant for food. And as I give you, or as I gave you rather the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood. And for your life blood, 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. So at the beginning and the end of that statement there is this command to be fruitful and multiply. Now we get to the Covenant and the sign of the Covenant. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and every living creature that is with you, the birds, the live stock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as come out or 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 boat 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. What does this covenant, the Noaic covenant, have to do with the way, We think, probably more than you would imagine. Let's look at it in turn, and let's look at the covenant. First of all, let's look at the parties of the covenant. Whenever we see a covenant in the ancient Near East, or a covenant that we find in the Bible, there are always parties identified, and there is usually one greater party and one lesser party. Here, look at verses eight through ten. God said to Noah, to his sons with him, behold, I established my covenant with you, your offspring after you, with every living creature that is with you, the birds and the livestock, and the beasts of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. It is for every beast of the earth. So we see first this is a covenant with God, Noah, his sons, and their offspring. But secondly we see both here and for example in verse seventeen, that it is a covenant with every living creature and all flesh. We also see, for example in verse thirty, that it is a covenant with the earth. So this covenant is a covenant that is not between God and a particular people, or even between God and just people. The noeic covenant is a covenant that God makes with everyone and everything in the world. This is going to be important as we move forward. But secondly, let's look at the sign of the covenant, the sign of the covenant. God said verse twelve, 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've set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. It is a visible sign, a universal sign, and a perpetual sign. Again, that's going to be important. It's visible, universal, and perpetual. I think it's rather ironic that the homosexual movement has taken the rainbow as the sign for their movement. That's quite ironic that God destroys the world because of sin and then makes a promise, and the sign of the covenant promise that God makes is the rainbow, and a group that engages in one of the most heinous sins that we find in the scriptures takes as their sign God's covenant sign with the earth. Thirdly, the promise of the covenant. The promise of the Covenant. Again, the sign of the Covenant visible, universal, perpetual, not, for example, like the Mosaic Covenant. The sign of the Mosaic Covenant was circumcision. That was a covenant between God and Israel. It was not for every human being. It was not for every people group. That was a specific covenant between God and Israel. God also gave them the Mosaic Law to be kept as part and part of that covenant. We don't find that here. What about the promise of the Covenant Verse eleven. 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. Now there are some serious implications here. For example, the covenant is universal and perpetual. Why because the flood was universal and not everyone believes that. There are many who argue that the flood was a local flood referenced here, that it was only a flood in that one region of the world, in the ancient Near East where these individuals lived. That people hadn't spread that far, and therefore the flood hadn't spread that far. One of the reasons that people began to make this argument after the eighteen thirties is because it was believed that the way that rocks and sediment formed took millions and millions of years. We understand by the way that you can have rocks and sediment formed much more quickly than that, especially if there is a catastrophic event like a flood accompanied with the eruption of volcanoes. It can happen almost instantaneously. But because of this, there are people who tried to merge what we find in the Bible with what we discovered from science, and all of a sudden, One of the ways that you sort of get around that is to say this flood was local. If the flood wasn't local, then God broke his covenant. Or if the flood wasn't it wasn't universal, rather global, then God broke his covenant because what does he say that the rainbow means? The rainbow means, I won't do that again. If Noah's flood was a local flood, God does that every week. Amen. There are people back at our home church in Houston who don't have homes anymore because a local flood came a hurricane washed a storm surge up into the Houston area, and their houses are gone. They're gone. Now, if Noah's flood was a flood like that, and we read here that the rainbow means he'll never do it again, then he did it again and he broke his covenant. And you don't know if he'll really say it, because if he broke that covenant, he'll break others. Do you follow this was a global flood? There are other implications. For example, the implication is that God controls nature. All things are under God's control, and future judgments will be of a different kind. This doesn't mean that there won't be future judgments. There are future judgments that come. We'll see one just in a couple of chapters, and the next message in the series perhaps fourth the conditions of the covenant. This covenant is also unique in this regard Verses fourteen to sixteen. When I bring clouds over the earth and the boat is seen in the clouds Now, who brings clouds? God? Who brings the boat? God? He doesn't say when I bring the clouds, if you put up a bow? He doesn't say, you know, if I put up a bow, and you bring He's going to bring the clouds, and he's going to bring the boat. 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. The Noek covenant is unique in that it is a one sided, unconditional covenant. There are no requirements to be met for this covenant. It is an unconditional guarantee from God himself. Nor did Noah and his sons ask for the covenant. Noah and his sons don't come off the boat and say, God, can you please promise us that we'll never have to endure that again. God initiates this covenant it. So what are the worldview implications here? What are the implications for the way we think. First, this implies that God created and controls the world. The world didn't happen by accident. The world doesn't run itself, the world doesn't control itself. God is not merely interacting with a similarly sovereign universe. God is sovereign over all things. Listen to this from Ligoneer. The Nek Covenant is God's pledge that he will preserve the stability of nature, a stability that will allow his people to flourish, and that will provide an arena for him to enter history and bring salvation. Moreover, our creators love for all that he has made is seen in the pledge that he will never again destroy the world, which is also an early sign that one day all creation will be renewed. And see, we believe that, you know, we can. It's getting hot, right, and it's getting hot because because summer is here, and it's going to get hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter, and then it will get wet and hot and wet and wet and wet and hot and hot and wet. This is different. I'm getting used, but I'm not there yet. But we know that that's going to come. If the rains don't come in a couple of months, everyone will start looking around and becoming frantic, and you know, we'll begin praying and we'll be gathering for prayer meetings and having national days of prayer and everything else. Why Because we live in a universe that's been designed to operate a certain way, and we can rely upon the world operating the way it is always operated because of God. And the rainbow is a reminder of that. It's a reminder of that. It's going to get hot, but it's not going to get too hot. We're not going to wake up one day and certainly suddenly find the Earth uninhabitable. It doesn't work that way. See, this is our worldview, and that's important. There are people who've spent billions, you now, trillions of dollars in space exploration. Now part of space exploration is going to places to find out where we could possibly live. Makes sense. Asteroid falls out of the sky. We're in trouble, we have to go. I'd like to know where we could go. Amen. Beyond that, there's also just the spirit of the explorer that God has put in us. There are many parts of the world that we know about now because somebody said, you know what I'm going to see. There are people who've risked and even lost their lives trying to cross the ocean just to see what's over there, trying to climb mountains just to see how high it is, trying to walk across deserts, because we explore things. I'm not talking about that. There are people who spent trillions and trillions of dollars exploring in space trying to find one thing. Not little green men just trying to find water, that's all. There's a space probe that was just destroyed this past week. For thirteen fourteen years, it's been bringing us magnificent images. Many of those images from Saturn and from the rings around Saturn ran out of fuel. They sent it down to Saturn so that they could get whatever information they could on the way to crash and Saturn done, there'll be something else out there to do. Do you know what? The most exciting thing they're talking about from this space probe? Water underneath the surface on one of Saturn's moons, underground water. Do you understand? This is why we're spending trillions and drillions of dollars. So you're sitting there and looking at me like, yeah, I don't know, I don't get it. Here's why that's important. If you believe that life happened on Earth by sheer accident, and that the only reason you and I or anything else exists is because the proper conditions were here. And then something began to move in water, and then it began to evolve in water, and then it evolved to the place where it could get out of water and live an amphibious life in the water, out of the water, and then it began to thrive on the land, and then it began to and eventually it became us from the goo to the zoo to you, if that's your cosmology, if that's what you believe about who we are as human beings. Finding water underground on one of the moons of Saturn means that if we explore, we might find you and me in the form that we were in billions of years ago on the way through the evolutionary cross. Trillions of dollars, trillions, trillions. Why because of a worldview decision that says there is no God and you and I just happened, just happened one day. Matter just combusted and it continued to move outward, and it's continuing today to move outward from the center of the big band. So why are we live in an ever expanding universe, and they speak about this confidently until you ask one question. Yes, body you in the back of the room, Yes, mister professor doctor PhD, Sir, I was just I was just wondering. I was just wondering one thing. Yes, what is it? So so the matter that exploded? Yeah, where did that come from? There is no answer to that question. It is a worldview, a sum. So don't ever let the evolutionist tell you that you are the one who makes assumptions and they operate on hard facts, because the entire premise upon which they build their understanding of origins is an assumption, an unproven presupposition that goes back to a question that forces them to say, I don't know beyond that, but that's where we start. And because that's where we start, we'll spend trillions and trillions of dollars trying to find water because we believe water creates life, and that makes us brilliant. You believe God creates life and that makes you food, or so they say. We live in an orderly universe because it was created by an orderly God. We may not be able to time things down to the minute or to the second, but night continues to come at night, and day continues to come at day, and the rains continue to come when they're supposed to come, and winter comes when it's supposed to come, and summer comes when it's supposed to come. There are some years that are hotter than others. There are other years that are colder than others. Because it's not just uniform, but it is orderly. And because it's orderly, we are able to say it's unseasonably hot or it's unseasonably cold. Why. Because God is orderly, he can be relied upon. Even the hurricanes that hit Houston, that hit you know, Florida, hit Texas, they hit Florida. Even those hurricanes horrible. Can you imagine two hundred kilometer per hour winds? Can you imagine storm surge several times higher than this bill? Can you imagine? But guess what? It came during what we know as hurricane season, because we even know when they come, because God is an orderly god. Amen. There could have been thousands of lives lost, and it used to happen that way, but now we know days in advance. Get out of here, it's coming. We can tell you just a about where it's going to come because of what we know. Why, Because we serve an orderly God and we live in an orderly universe, it's time to plant. How do you know? Because we serve an orderly God and we live in an orderly universe, it's time to harvest. How do you know? Because we serve an orderly God and we live in an orderly universe. And it's not just us. It's not just us. There are animals that migrate at the same time every year. Why because we serve an orderly God and we live in an orderly universe. And there's something in them that says it's time, let's go that direction. And when they get there they find what they need to survive. These are implications of the Noyek Covenant. By the way, this is also why Jesus did nature miracles. The fact that he could control nature was one of the indications that he's God. That he could speak to winds and waves and they would obey him. Why. Because he's God. He created the world, he created the universe, He created the wind and the waves, and even the wind and the waves obey him because he is God. This is also why we hope for the restoration of the earth. Creation was affected by the fall Genesis three seventeen to nineteen. And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you in pain. You shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat of the plants of the field by the sweat of your face. Face you should eat bread till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken for your dust, and to dust you shall return. Not only that, but Creation right now continues to groan in anticipation of its redemption. Romans, Chapter eight, verses twenty to twenty two. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. In hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been growing together in the pains of childbirth until now. Creation is anxiously anticipating its redemption, and that redemption will come at the end of the Age Revelation twenty two, Verses one through five. Turn there if you have your bibles. Revelation twenty two. The nie angels showed me the river of the Water of Life, bright as crystal, flowing from the Throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city. Also on the other side of the river the Tree of Life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more. They will have no need of light or the light of lamp or sun, for the Lord will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. Amazing. Creation begins in a garden. The fall occurs when a man eats from a tree. Redemption occurs when a man dies on a tree, and consummation will occur when we're in a city with the tree of life. Creation matters. That's why we exercise stewardship over creation. We do not hunt animals into extinction. We do not use resources until they run dry. We do not waste things, or at least we should not, especially as Christians. Amen, we seek to improve and beautify. We pursue truth, beauty, and goodness because of God's attitude toward creation, and we reflect his attitude towards creation. The Noeic Covenant reiterates God's attitude toward creation and our duty and responsibility toward the creation that God has made. Now, we also believe in a distinction between God and creation. God is sovereign, He is not part of creation. So we reject pan in theism. Now, pantheism is the idea that there are many gods. Pan in theism is the idea that God is a part of nature. There are many versions of this. There is earth worship or guia worship. We reject earth worship. We reject guia worship. Amen, you talk about Mother Nature all you want to. My mama's name was Francis. Amen. Somebody Nature's not Mama. Shee not even my sister. She's the creation of my father, and I don't worship her or personify her. We also reject animism. We reject the idea that, you know, somehow nature stands there independent of God and there are just these forces out there that we can somehow control. So if I can just get, you know, a bit of your hair or a piece of jewelry or clothing from you, and then go get some stuff from out there in nature and put that possession of yours and that piece of your hair, and you know, whatever else, I can make a concoction, and I can control you by controlling nature, because nature is this divine thing and if you just tap it. Does this sound familiar to anybody? Do you know how many Christians run frightened from this kind of stuff in church, shouting on Sunday and on Monday, scared because somebody told you that there's somebody in the village about to do something to you because they got a piece of your hair. If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch. We reject animism. Nature is not divine. God is God. Nature is created by God. Amen. We do not manipulate nature. God controls it. We reject the radical green movement. It's interesting, there's a ditch on both sides of the road. On the one side, of the road. You have people who will, you know, throw their trash anywhere, go to the bathroom a few feet from where they cook their food, hunt things into extinction. There's a ditch on that side of the road. We reject that. But on the other side of the road there's the radical green movement, where man is an intruder on nature and man has to give way to nature because nature is supposed to be pristine and untouched by man. We reject that side of the ditch, on that side of the road as well. So we are to be responsible stewards of what God has created. We are to protect and preserve. We are to pursue truth, beauty, and goodness. But we are not to prefer nature over ourselves. We're to subdue it and use it for our purposes. Thirdly, because of this, we believe in God's wrath and judgment. We believe in God's wrath and judgment. The rainbow reminds us that there will be no more global flood amen for that. There's a lot of bad things I can imagine. There's a few things I can imagine worse than the whole world being flooded for forty days. But it also reminds us that there was a global flood because of God's wrath and judgment, and it warns us because there is a final judgment to come. Amen, sin is serious and it has serious consequences. God is serious about sin, and he poured out his wrath on sin here and in other places and in other ways to remind us again and again and again that sin has consequences. But we also believe in grace and redemption. All of this, all of this from this simple covenant, because it fits into our broader worldview. That God created the world, and he created the world for his glory. That God created man, and he put man in the garden with three different types of trees to teach him about truth, beauty, and goodness. And he gave man a stewardship and a responsibility and a mandate. That man fell, but the mandate didn't go away. That man is a sinner in need of redemption, and that the entire world is in need of redemption. But that God is not only just, is also merciful, and in his mercy he's restored us through the person and work of Christ. And in his mercy he's restoring everything around us for his own glory and for our pleasure, and that everything is moving forward toward the consummation. You see, we also reject this platonic idea. We reject the idea that somehow flesh is bad, material things are bad, spiritual things are good. We reject that idea. As Christians, we reject that idea first and foremost because God has given us his word. But He's also given us a pattern in scripture. Why don't we bury our dead as opposed to burning them? Well? Number one, because all the patriarchs were buried, the kings were buried, Jesus was buried. Amen. Secondly, burning bodies is a pagan idea from pagan cal cultures that believe the material world is evil and it's not even real. So you burn the body as a symbol of the fact that you believe that was just a shell. It doesn't matter. We know better because we're redeemed, not only physically, but not only spiritually, but physically, we are going to be reunited with our bodies. Amen. Christ got up from the grave in his body. He has send it to the right hand of the Father in his body. He is returning in his body. What does that have to do with this, folks. Not only that, but at the end of the age, creation is redeemed as well. Not only does he redeem your body, he redeems the world that you live in in your body. This is the Christian worldview. So just like we respect these bodies that are going to die and be resurrected, we respect this world that we live in that is going to be judged and restored. We are whole people, We live in a whole world, and we will experience whole redemption. And the fact that we believe this changes the way that we look at, think about, and interact with the world around us. This is the way we think. Let's pray, Father, Thank you. Thank you for the world that you created, for your glory and for our enjoyment. Thank you for the stewardship that you've given. Thank you for reminding us today that things matter, That the tangible world around us matters, Our bodies matter, this world that we inhabit matters. These things matter. Grant by your grace that we might not only embrace this truth, but be changed by it, that it might change the way we interact with the world around us, that it might change the way we interact with our fellow man, that it might change the way we think about eternity, about time, about stewardship. And I pray that as we experience this changing of seasons that we're in the middle of, that we would be reminded that we serve a God who is sovereign over creation, and then being reminded of that, may we praise you? May we praise you before we ask it? In Christ? Then? Amen? Well, I've been a pastor long enough to know that I need to answer a question. What if my father, my mother, my loved one was cremated, burned after they died, what then is there no hope for them in eternity? There is as much hope for them that they were a believer and died in Christ as there is for the Christians who were burned at the stake. Amen. People can't deny us entrance into Heaven. They can't deny us the resurrection. They can't deny us the eternal state because they do something to our bodies, or even if we foolishly do something to our bodies. We serve the God who spoke the world into existence with a word. Amen.