The Bible: One Bite at a Time Expository Sermon Series Notes Genesis to The Revelation Sid Galloway © 1999 .....

God's Rainbow Covenant: His Promise Marches On To the Day of Judgment  Genesis 8-9   For more pictures click on the World

Audio Tapes # 36 & 37 July 23 & 30, 2000       (Notes Updated July 25, 2000)

Review: (Gen 1-6) See the notes on the Web -
Creation - Rebellion - Global Greenhouse Canopy - Violence - Flood - Noah's Ark
     

Yet God's sovereign mercy and grace always makes a way to fulfill His plan and its promise (Rom 8:28-29)! God will bring out of this dying world, a remnant of followers, by grace alone through faith alone in the person and sufficient work of Messiah, the seed of a woman.

                
The Text: Genesis 8:1 - 9:17
(Emphasis in bold, Strong's #'s and original terms bold in parentheses)

"Then God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. 2 The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. 3 And the waters receded continually from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters decreased. 4 Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.
6 So it came to pass, at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. 7 Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth. 8 He also sent out from himself a dove, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her, and drew her into the ark to himself. 10 And he waited yet another seven days, and again he sent the dove out from the ark. 11 Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. 12 So he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, which did not return again to him anymore.
13 And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry. 14 And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dried.

15 Then God spoke to Noah, saying, 16 “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17 “Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” 18 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. 19 Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. 22 “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.”

Chapter 9:1 So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. 2 “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. 3 “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. 4 “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 “Surely for your lifeblood 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. 6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man. And as for you, be fruitful and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it.”

8 Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying: 9 “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you, 10 “and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth. 11 “Thus I establish My covenant with you: 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.” 12 And 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: 13 “I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. 14 “It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; 15 “and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 “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.” 17 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.”

Brief Exposition and Commentary - (Gen 8:1 - 9:17)

Sadly, very few parents today teach their little ones the awesome truth and meaning behind the rainbow. The reason is usually because the parents don't know the evidence that demonstates the historical validity of Noah and the biblical, global flood. (Lasted 1 year, 10 days)

If you knew the massive volume of evidence preserved by our sovereign Lord, then every rainbow would be to you a powerfully motivating memorial of God's grace, leading you to worship and holy living.

8:1-5 "God remembered" = God never forgot. This merely means He looked down with mercy and grace, just as He had planned all along.

- Water receeds rapidly & the ark rests on mountains of Ararat (tallest = 17,000 feet).
- So the text is clearly claiming a global flood of catastrophic proportions, not a local area flood or even a "tranquil" world-wide flood as some liberal critiques have claimed.

- Dr. Henry Morris, Ph.D. (Hydrologist), on pp. 683-685 of his book, The Genesis Record, lists 100 proofs of the global, and cataclysmic nature of the flood. These biblical, historical, arechaeological, geological, and scientific evidences provide overwhelming support that the biblical record is literally true.
[Videos are also available from www.answersingenesis.org, which present these proofs in vivid and animated detail: "The World That Perished", and "Mt. St. Helens".]

- The newly resurrected (baptized) world was covered with mass graves of dead animals in sediment layers, among great canyons gouged out by the rush of receeding waters.
- Modern scientists now see a world vastly different from the one that existed before the flood, and even more different than the one in the garden of Eden before rebellion, death, and the second law of thermodynamics had entered in. Catastrophic changes totally altered the conditions, which since the flood have now existed in relative uniformity for over 4,000 years.
(Gen 8:21; 2 Pet 3:1-10)
- Dr. Morris on pp. 212-213 describes the process by which we now have a world covered in millions of fossils, buried in rock layers. The fossil record is acutally one of the strongest evidences of a catastrophic global flood, and not gradual evolution:

"These sediments were rapidly being lithified, through the eroded and dissolved cementing agents present in the waters that had deposited the sediments, thus becoming the great beds of fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks that are now found everywhere around the world. The fossils so preserved were not heterogeneously dispersed throughout the sediments, but were generally deposited in a certain statistical order, from the more simple marine invertebrate organisms on the bottom to complex land vertebrates near the top.
"This is in the order of (1) increasing elevation of natural habitat, with fossil assemblages tending to be buried in association with the same ecological communities in which they had lived; (2) increasing ability to flee from the encroaching Flood waters; (3) increasing resistance to hydrodynamic forces and therefore an increasing tendency to be transported farther and deposited more slowly."

". . . . One should recognize, too, that nowhere in the world does the so-called geological column actually occr. It is possible for any vertical sequence of the "ages", or any portion of them, to exist in any given locality. Any age may be on the bottom, any on top, and any in between."

". . . . The fossils in this geological column, however, speak eloquently of death, and therefore they must have been deposited after Adam's fall and God's curse."

v. 2 God ended the flood by three divine actions:

1. He sent a wind over the earth ("ruach" = wind or spirit) Gen 1:2, 9
2. He stopped the subterrainean fountains from erupting.
3. He closed the windows of heaven (the canopy was empty).

- The greenhouse effect from the vapor canopy (waters above the firmament) had gone now that the canopy collapsed into rain. The previously warm, calm weather was now a climate of cold and windy storms, culminating in the freezing of the polar ice caps and the ice age. This ice age may have killed off many of the larger, cold-blooded reptiles.
- Ocean basins sank like gigantic sink holes, when they emptied of their underground water reserviors and no longer had sufficient pressure to uphold them.
- The earth's crust simultaneously buckled and huge mountain ranges arose.
Psalm 104:1-9

1 "Bless the Lord, O my soul!
O Lord my God, You are very great:
You are clothed with honor and majesty,
2 Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment,
Who stretch out the heavens like a curtain.
3 He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters,
Who makes the clouds His chariot,
Who walks on the wings of the wind,
4 Who makes His angels spirits,
His ministers a flame of fire.
5 You who laid the foundations of the earth,
So that it should not be moved forever,
6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
The waters stood above the mountains.
7 At Your rebuke they fled;
At the voice of Your thunder they hastened away.
8 They went up over the mountains;
They went down into the valleys,
To the place which You founded for them.
9 You have set a boundary that they may not pass over,
That they may not return to cover the earth."

v. 3 Water drained rapidly off into the ocean basins & subterrainean aquifers.
v. 4 The Ark "rested".

-This is the second mention of something resting in the Bible. The first is God after creation, Gen 2:2-3, (these are not the same Hebrew terms, but synonyms).
- The Ark is a type of Christ who "finished" His work on the cross (Joh 19:30).
In fact, Morris (p. 209), says the specific date given in Genesis of the 17th day of the 7th month is the same date that Jesus rose from the grave.
The Ark was like a huge coffin, resurrected up and out of death into new life in Christ.

v. 5-6 Noah opened the window of the Ark, & sent out two birds as an experiment.
Four flights were made, with a week of patient faith between each experiment.

- v. 7 Raven: Went back and forth. Ravens had become omnivorous (eating anything), so it may have fed on the rotting carcasses of dead animals.
- v. 8-9 Dove: Went out and came back home, since doves will not settle unless they find a dry, clean place. Then ". . . [Noah] put out his hand and took her, and drew her into the ark to himself."

Note the effort God went to in the recording of Scripture to show gentle care and concern even for the animals. This emphasis on His compassionate grace and mercy for the animals, and His expectation that His people who represent Him do the same, will be seen throughout this historical narrative.

- v. 10 Dove sent again & returns with an olive leaf. Plants are growing, things are almost ready. But not quite.
- v. 12 Dove sent the last time, and she stays out in the new world.

- v. 13 After 314 days since the flood began, Noah removed the covering of the Ark.
- v. 14 God commands him to go out 371 days after the flood began. The land was mostly a desolate waste, radiation beating down with no vapor canopy to stop it. It was a world nearly formless and void, alternately hot and cold, winds and clouds building into thunderstorms, all the coastlines were rocky and steep since no beaches had yet eroded, no lush forests, and in every way forcing Noah and his family to depend upon God for survival.

God Gives Commands First, Then He Gives Promises (Gen 7:1; 8:15-19)

Commands: Note how this parallels Jesus commands and promises.

Gen 7:1      God commands Noah to come into the Ark for rest.
Mat 11:28  Jesus commands us to come to Him and find rest.
Gen 8:16    God commands Noah to go out to the world and mulitply godly seed (9:1).
Mat 28:18  Jesus commands us to go out to the world and make disciplined disciples, so they can have rest also.

8:20 First altar in recorded history. Burnt offerings of clean animals were sacrificed as praise and propitiation. The clean animals were the domesticated ones that Noah likely "knew" and loved most intimately. The horror and reality of sin is forced upon God's people, when we see the price (penalty) that must be paid (life for life). The wages of sin is death (separation from God, who alone is self-existent life.

8:21 Lord smelled pleasant aroma. (1 Sam 16:7) God looks at the heart, not only the outer behavior, which is all mans can see (James 2). Just as God accepted Abel's attitude of submissive faith (gratitude), He accepted Noah's faithful heart attitude, not just the physical sacrifice of life on Noah's behalf. Noah offered a symbol of what he knew was the price for his own sin. Through it, he trusted that God would send Messiah (the seed of a woman, Gen 3) to pay the price of life for life, soul for soul, forgiveness purchased by God alone. Later in the same way, God will accept Abraham's submissive faith as well (Gen 12-18; Rom 3-5).

God's Promise's: Unconditional & Conditional Dimensions

Unconditional: (To corporate mankind & the animals - nephesh)

1. No new curse of the ground.
2. No flood of the whole earth again.
3. Stable seasons will exist so long as the current earth remains.
3. (Implied) A final day of judgment will come when the earth will be destroyed and all men judged (2 Pet 3:1-10).

Conditional: (For temporal, personal intimacy with God, Gen 9:5-6)

God commands first, then He promises consequences based on our response.
Modern parents reverse the order, by first begging and bribing their children,
then they say to the child, "I said do it! Okay?".
The effect is that they actually end up asking the child if the command was OK.
The result = Disobedience - Disorder - Dysfunction - Destruction - Dishonor of God.

Genesis 9 - God's Plan & Provision to Fulfill His Promise:

vv. 1-7 Cornerstone of human government, to prevent a repeat of the preflood escalation of moral and social entropy that resulted in violent anarchy.

- Rom 13; Titus 2; 1 Pet 2-5; all reiterate the fact that human government is to be respected and obeyed as the physical hand of God, for His glory (unless government commands God's people to violate Scripture).
- v. 1 & 7, God's command to multiply is to men, who represent God who is male, to L.E.A.D. others toward the mature image of Christ the God/Man King.
(In 4,000 years, starting with 8 people, now have 6 billion. This is an average of 2.5 children per family, which is an annual increase in population of .5%)

- Why are dominion & subdue omitted? Satan was given proximate dominion after the fall, and will be the "god of this world" (John 16:11; 2 Cor 4:4; Eph 2:2) until Jesus throws him into the pit after the trubulation, and prior to the millennial kingdom. Note that Satan also offered Jesus the world during the temptation in the wilderness (Mat 4).

v. 2 - (see Keil & Delitzsch, Vol 1, p. 152) Animals now full of fear & terror of man. This fact of animal behavior is true all over the world. Humans are never the normal prey of any species. And the only explanation is Gen 9:2.
v. 3 - Vegetarian diet is now changed to include animal protein. Why? The destruction of much of the plant life, climate changes that would make farming much more difficult, and the radiation that would mutate the genetic blueprint of subsequent generations of plants, all necessitated an additional source of nutrition. They especially needed amino acids essential for protein synthesis.
v. 4 - BUT NOT THE BLOOD, which represents the soul (nephesh) even for animals. (See the Moody video on blood, "The River of Life", and sermon notes on Gen 1 & 2) Even the animal soul is sacred to God, who cares for all creatures who think, feel, and are able to suffer. (Lev 17:11; Jonah 4:11; Mat 6:26; 10:29; Heb 9:26-27). Remember from previous studies, that plants have no nephesh chayee and are therefore organic machines without life.

Leupold (Exposition of Genesis) says the following about these verses, and their revelation of God's personal, loving care for His animals:

(v 8:1) ". . . there is a tender touch in the account that describes the Almightly God as having concern for all His creatures." (p. 309)

(8: 9) "With the insertion of details, for it was a memorable deed and indicative of the kindly relationship existing between this man of God and the lesser creature, the narrative tells us how "he put out his hand and took her and brought her to him into the ark.'" (p. 315)

(9:4) ". . . because even a beast's soul is a thing divinely created, the medium in which it lives and has its being is almost identical with it and should be respectfully treated, not devoured." (p. 331)

(9:8) "Even the subdivisions under the heading of the term 'living creatures' are mentioned, . . . . The reason for such detail is to make the divine concern for even the least of the creatures strongly apparent to Noah. The wild animals, . . . are for that matter even mentioned twice (v 10) for the same reason, for they of all beings might seem to need divine favor least."

** When we as God's people fail to display God's love for His animals, by misusing and abusing them through selfish disregard for their suffering, it grossly dishonors the Lord. It distorts His image to the world, and tempts them to react with "animal rights" organizations like P.E.T.A. In a similar manner, the failure of Christian husbands to model the loving rulership of Christ over His bride (Eph 5), provokes and encourages the reaction of militant feminist organizations such as N.O.W. (National Organization of Women).

vv 9:5-6 Man's soul is even more sacred, since it was uniquely created in God's image.

"Require" = legal term establishing capital punishment, not personal vengence.
This is the foundation of all government law, delegated by God directly.
Leupold says:

"As Luther already very clearly saw, by this word government is instituted, this basic institution for the welfare of man. for if man receives power over other men's lives under certain circumstances, then by virture of having received power over the highest good that man has, power over the lesser things is naturally included, such as power over property to the extent of being able to exact taxes, over our persons to the extent of being able to demand various types of work and service, as need may arise. Government, then, being grounded on this word, is no by human contract, or by surrender of certain powers, or by encroachment of priestcraft. It is a divine institution."

(See also, Keil Vol. 1, p. 153)

Disobedience > Disorder > Dysfunction > Destruction > Dishonor of God's Image

"Shed" = shaphak = "poured out" as used in Psa 69:24 (God's wrath); Joel 2:28 (God's Spirit); Lev 4:30 (animal blood); Psa 22:14 (Christ's life on the cross like water, c.f. Isa 53:10).

v. 7 - "swarm", a strong term showing God's desire that we produce as many children as we can, trusting Him to restrain the numbers instead of us using abortion, euthanasia and birth control.
(See Linda Galloway's article on "The Myth of Overpopulation")

Gen 9:8-17
Rainbow Promise of Perfect Provision in Messiah
(Jesus' life, death, reign)

The Rainbow Covenant ("berith") - God calls, "My covenant"
From Adam to Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, through Jesus the King, God promises that in spite of man's rebellion, God will fulfill His promise of bringing a people out of this world of sin and death, and into His new heaven and new earth. Leupold (p. 336) conveys the magnitude of safety and security in this promise of God:

"The covenant which was promised 6:18 before the Flood, here goes into effect. A covenant is the most solemn and binding form of divine promise, given for man's double assurance and because of man's carnal weakness, but quite unnecessary when God's part of the agreement is concerned. Therefore, such covenants are not to be put on a parallel with huiman covenants in which two contracting parties meet on the same level and make mutual pledges. Divine covenants emanate from God - . . . . He makes them, He fixes the terms and the conditions, He in sovereign freedom binds Himself."

The Rainbow of God's Manifold Nature (Eph 3:10) - God's blazingly glory is not only represented by blinding white light, but even more in the beauty of the many colored rainbow. His manifold wisdom, attributes, and character is infinitely more beautiful, complex, and awe inspiring, if we will simply take the time to meditate on Him. Central to all of His character is His holy love, which hates all suffering of any kind, even of the animals (Leupold, p. 337). This is why He alone is worthy of our submissive trust.

"Rainbow" is mentioned three other times in Scripture:
1. Eze 1:28, around God's throne just before He judges Israel.
2. Rev 4:3, around God's throne just before He allows the Tribulation.
3. Rev 10:1-6 as the crown of the mighty angel who comes just before the Great Tribulation of the last 3 1/2 years of the Tribulation.

Delitzsch expresses the contrast between the blazing beauty of the full spectrum of God's glory and the dark shadows of sin. He writes:

'[The rainbow] shines forth against a dark background which but shortly before flashed with lightnings, it symbolizes the victory of bright, gentle love over the darkly luminous wrath; growing as it does out of the interactin of sun and dark clouds, it symbolizes the readiness of the heavenly to interpenetrate the earthly; extending from heaven to earth, it proclaims peace between God and man' reaching, as it does, beyond the range of vision, it declares that God's covenant of grace is all-embracing.'
(Keil & Delitzsch, pp. 154-155, Vol 1)

"Our fathers did well to teach their children to pray at least the Lord's Prayer whenever the rainbow appeared." (Leupold's, Exposition of Genesis, p. 340).

At most, we should fall on our knees in worship and praise!

Morris, p. 230:

"The rainbow thus demonstrates most gloriously the grace of God. The pure white light from the unapproachable holiness of His throne (1 Tim 6:16) is refracted, as it were, through the glory clouds surrounding His presence (1 Kings 8:10-11), breaking into all the glorious colors of God's creation. In wrath, he remembers mercy. the glory follows the sufferings; and where sin abounded, grace did much more abound!"

How does all of this apply to: Are you, your family, and your church functioning as a prism for the full spectrum of God's radiant glory? Are your relationships refracting the colorful beauty of His attributes? Or are they dysfunctional because they are disordered and therefore destructive and dishonoring to our Father?

* Yourself?
Eph 6:1-3 = If children are to honor and obey their human parents, how much more are we to respond in kind to our Heavenly Father. Is your life a "rainbow", a sign, of your Father's holiness and grace for others to see? Do you live as if the covenant promises of God are real, including the coming judgment of the world (this time by fire)?

Are you eager to witness with boldness and sensitivity with the faithfulness of Noah? When you see a rainbow, do you directly share its real meaning?

* Your Family?
How about your marriage and your family relationships. Do they reveal the beauty of God's family character (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)?

* Your Church?
Pastors, are you a shepherd as faithful and as compassionate as Noah? Do you preach the uncompromising message of Genesis (creation, sin, the global flood, the rainbow)? Do you genuinely L.E.A.D. your sheep toward restoration and maturity in Christ?

Use the following chart to examine yourself, and change by putting off habit patterns of attitude, behavior, & countenance.

* For more information, including technical articles, books, videos, etc., about Noah's Ark, click the following links and books:

- http://www.answersingenesis.org/
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