Sermon on Genesis 9:1 – 15
October 5,
2008
Text: 1So 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. 7And as for you, be fruitful and multiply; Bring forth
abundantly in the earth And multiply in it.” 8Then 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.” 12And 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.
*****
In
Christ Jesus, Dear Fellow Redeemed:
You
will recognize our sermon text for this morning from the Old Testament reading
in our Harvest Festival service last week.
Given the financial upheaval that has been occurring in our nation and
around the world this past week, as well as the hysteria on the part of the
news media, it was felt that we would do well to have a reminder that the LORD
God is in control and that, even if the world around us seems to be failing, He
will not fail us, as He promises, “I will never leave you or forsake you”
(Heb 13:5).
Remember:
and
the proof is in His Creation and in His Gospel Promises.
Benjamin
Franklin is reputed to have said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants
us to be happy.” What he said is
true in the sense that all of the earthly blessings that God has given us are
proof that He loves us.
Put
yourself in the place of Noah and his family as they came off of the ark after
the waters of the Flood had receded.
Imagine the devastation that they saw.
Imagine the emptiness. If
anyone needed the assurance of God’s love, it was these eight people following
the destruction of the worldwide Flood.
“So
God blessed Noah and his sons…” In
so doing, the LORD God blessed all mankind.
The commands and the permissions given here in our text are known almost
universally, whether someone knows God’s Word or not. Compare all of the things that God gives to Noah and his sons
with what you see today.
God blesses marriage by
encouraging Noah’s family to, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” In our day, so many look on children as
being an economic drag. But, think
about God’s command. Would He give the
command if He didn’t also intend to give parents the means to raise their
children? It is written in the Psalms,
“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb is a reward” (Ps 127:3). Trust in the Lord.
Whether He gives you one or two or six or seven, He promises that He
will give you the means to provide for your family, as He points out again
through the psalmist, “I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not
seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread” (Ps
37:25). As we hear alarmists telling us
about how there are too many people on the earth, remember the Word of the LORD
and that it was He Himself who gave man the command to “fill the earth.” This command was so important to the LORD
that He gave it to Noah twice, telling him to be fruitful and multiply in the
earth.
Speaking
of bread, before the Flood, apparently, it seems that man was a
vegetarian. After the Flood, the LORD
gives man permission to eat animals. He
says, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you
all things, even as the green [plants]…” Think about that as you’re
out hunting deer this Fall and give thanks to the LORD that He has given you
the deer to be food for you. Think
about that when you go to the grocery store and see cooler after cooler filled
with meat and fish and poultry and give thanks to the LORD for providing for you. The only qualification the LORD puts on that
is that man not eat animals while the blood is still pumping through them,
i.e., kill them and then eat them.
Life, whether man or animal is to be respected, as He points out in the
next verse, saying, “…you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its
blood. Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning.”
Life
is important to the LORD. In connection
with giving man permission to kill animals and eat their meat, we see that the
LORD is also protecting mankind. At
Creation God gave man dominion over the animals. Man had nothing to fear from the animals before the Fall into
sin. But, now, the LORD says, “…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.” Certainly there are exceptions to animals
being afraid of man, esp. when man becomes too familiar to the animals, but God
put this instinct in the animals to protect man. Many animals are of such a size and equipped with the tools to
easily kill a human. But this is a
relatively rare occurrence. The reason
for it is found in our text.
And,
whether a person is killed by an animal or another person, the LORD says, “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.”
Here in our text God institutes government and gives it the authority to
avenge the taking of a human life, as He says, “Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.” In the New Testament the LORD explains,
“[Government] does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an
avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil” (Rom 13:4). Government is also given by the LORD as a
blessing to man, to protect life.
These
are things that are all commonly known among mankind, whether one knows the
Scriptures or not. But there is more
that God would have us know to prove His love for us, more than just the
blessings of His Creation.
This
past summer while I was kayaking in the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior in
northern Wisconsin we encountered a three mile section of cliffs on one island,
meaning that we had no place to stop until we got to the end of the
cliffs. When we were in the middle of
this section a violent thunderstorm came up behind us and we needed a place to
get off the water immediately. The map
showed nothing nearby. As the clouds
spilled over the top of the cliffs, I prayed, “Lord, please give us a safe
place to land!” We went around the
next point and there was a small beach about as big as the area here at the
front of the church. As we sat out the
rainstorm, suddenly a full, double rainbow appeared to the East and someone
said, “Where there’s a rainbow, there must be sun!” And, sure enough, in the next ten minutes,
the clouds passed overhead on their way to the U.P. and we paddled to our
campsite under blue skies.
For
the next two hours as we paddled we kept coming back to the subject of the
rainbow and what it means, and how those who don’t know Scripture are missing
out on the true beauty of the rainbow.
Here’s what the rainbow means, and it is something that can only be
known from the Holy Scriptures. God
says, “`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.’ 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: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the
sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. It shall be, when I bring a
cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; 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.’”
Remember
the big hail storm that we had here in Marquette last year? Ever since that storm, or, at least, until
only recently, when a cloud comes up in the sky, our little Miranda runs for
cover screaming about the thunderstorm.
Now, put yourself in the place of Noah and his family after the
Flood. For years afterward, a raincloud
would have caused Noah and his family to wonder if this was going to be a
repeat of the worldwide Flood. So that
they wouldn’t run screaming every time it rained, God set His bow in the clouds
to remind them of His promise that He would never again destroy the earth by
means of water. Remember that the Flood
came as a result of man’s worldwide sinfulness. Never again, no matter how sinful man became, God says, He will
not destroy the earth with a Flood. In
fact, from Scripture, we know that the LORD will allow the earth to stand until
the Last Day. Certainly, there have
been, and will be, local catastrophes.
But these are only reminders to repent before the Last Day comes. Speaking of some who had been killed by
Roman soldiers, Jesus says, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse
sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell
you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen
on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were
worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but
unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Lk 13:2 – 5). That Day is coming. But it has not yet come. There still is time to repent.
When
we see a rainbow, we are to be reminded of the grace of God. When you see a rainbow, remember that in
spite of our sinfulness, God promises to let the earth remain. This is what we refer to as the time of
grace. This is the time that He
wants us to, “Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is
near” (Is 55:6). This is also why
He protects man’s life from other men, as He says in our text, “Whoever
sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He
made man.” God made man in His
image, i.e., righteous and holy (Eph
4:23), and He wants to restore to all people that image.
We
may suffer hard times, physical trouble, health problems, and so on, to the
point even that we wonder if God cares about us or loves us. We need look no further than His Word to
find indisputable proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. “For God so loved the world that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have
everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the
world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (Jn 3:16f). God loves us so much that He sent His Son
to be the satisfactory payment for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the
whole world (1 Jn 2:2; 4:10). How’s
that for love? How’s that for proof of
that love? “He who did not spare His
own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely
give us all things?” (Rom 8:32).
God gave His Son to die to pay for your sins so that you would have
eternal happiness in heaven.
Look
at the rainbow and think of what Jesus says, “Therefore I say to you, do not
worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put
on. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing…But seek
the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you. Do not fear,
little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom”
(Lk 12:22f, 31f).
Amen.