Genesis 8
20 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. 21 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. 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
Genesis 9
1And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. 2 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. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. 4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 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. 6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. 7 And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.” 8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, 10 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. 11 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.” 12 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: 13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 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. 16 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.” 17 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.”
I love that old joke, “What do you get if you play a country song backwards?” Answer: You get your truck back, you get your dog back, you get your wife back, etc. Here is a little secret about Roni and me: we really love old sad country songs. For instance, we have a deep love for Vern Gosdin and his heartbreak songs as well as for a number of classic heartbreak songs from various other artists. One of my particular joys in life is hearing my wife sing aloud, say, Patty Loveless’ “Nothing But the Wheel” while driving down the road. One of our favorite sad country songs is Randy Travis’ song “Promises.” In 1987 Randy Travis released the song on his “Forever and Ever, Amen” album. It is a quintessentially sad country song. It is called “Promises” but, in truth, it should be called “Broken Promises” because the song is all about a guy who cannot keep his promises to his wife. The song begins by painting a picture of a guy who keeps leaving his wife to go party. He goes to disreputable places with disreputable people and drinks and carouses while his wife is at home. Then, when we reach the chorus, we find him at home begging for her forgiveness and making promises that he will not keep.
And I’ll make promises…
promises to change.
I’ll make her promises,
swear I’ll rearrange,
and I’ll start giving all the
love she needs, if only she
will stay.
You can feel the weightlessness of these frantic promises even when you hear this chorus for the first time. You can tell that this is a cycle and that his promises simply are not really going to be kept! Then he speaks of his wife’s assurances to forgive and stay with him and of the temporal nature of those assurances.
Once again, she’ll reassure me.
And I believe her love will cure me,
and I’ll fall asleep with tears on my face.
And I know she’s just a woman,
and her love can’t last forever.
And someday soon, I know
she’ll leave without a trace.
For, broken promises will tear her dreams apart.
Just token promises will someday
break her heart,
and for the last time, she’ll hold me
when I cry, and while I’m sleeping…
she’ll quietly say goodbye…
Promises with no weight and a love that will not last: these are the makings of a great country song. In life, however, these are painful reminders of the fickle nature of human resolve and affection. Yes, all too often human beings prove themselves adept at hurting one another with broken promises. Broken promises do indeed tear our dreams apart!
There is One, however, whose promises will never be broken. There is One whose word is secure until the end of time. I am speaking of God and of His promises. At the end of Genesis 8 and then through Genesis 9, we read of God’s promise to the whole human race through Noah. This promise is called “the Noahic covenant.” A covenant is a binding promise or agreement between either God and all of humanity or God and His redeemed people.
Let us consider this point for just a moment. Some covenant promises apply to the whole world. Some apply only to God’s redeemed people in the world. I want to show you that the Noahic covenant is a covenant, a promise, that God makes with the world at large. We can tell that it is with the whole world, and not only with God’s people, by looking at the wording and the nature of it. David VanDrunen rightly points out four things about the Noahic covenant that let us know it applies to the whole world.
First, the common kingdom established by the Noahic covenant concerns ordinary cultural activities.
Second, the kingdom established by the Noahic covenant embraces the human race in common.
Third, the common kingdom established by the Noahic covenant ensures the preservation of the natural and social order.
Fourth, the common kingdom established by the Noahic covenant is put into place temporarily.[1]
This is true. The Noahic covenant is for the whole world, not merely for God’s own people. We should therefore see it as a divine covenant established with Noah after the flooding of the earth that was intended to set parameters around the human race, the animal kingdom, and the whole world. It is, then, a kind of “rebooting” covenant, a covenant that reestablishes the ground rules. It does not offer eternal salvation. Rather, it offers temporal marching orders to Noah and, by extension, to all of Noah’s descendants, that is, to the entire world. By “temporal” I simply mean that the Noahic covenant is in effect so long as the world exists.
Let us consider, then, this amazing promise, this amazing covenant. When God decided to give promises to the remnant of humanity that survived the flood and through whom the earth would be populated, what did He say? I would like to propose that the Noahic covenant is a covenant of restraint but also a covenant of fruitfulness and faithfulness.
The Noahic covenant is a covenant of restraint.
First, we see that the Noahic covenant is a covenant of restraint. It calls for certain things notto happen. It hems in, as it were, or calls for the hemming in of certain dynamics. I really appreciate what R.R. Reno said about this covenant when he wrote:
The covenant with Noah…does not so much move history forward as stay the destructive effects of sin. For this reason the flood is best understood as the covenant of God’s patience…The blessing that changes human relations to animals and establishes the basic duty to punish transgression lays the foundations for human survival. The family tribe, held together by rough justice, enters the flow of history.[2]
This covenant is therefore a “guardrail” covenant, a covenant of parameters, a covenant call for certain restraints.
Divine Restraint – God will not flood the entire earth again.
The first act of restraint in this agreement, this promise, this covenant, is divine in nature. As such, only God could promise this and only God could actualize it. We see the element of divine restraint present first in the end of Genesis 8 then again in Genesis 9:8-11.
Genesis 8
20 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. 21 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. 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
What is interesting about God’s expression of the Noahic covenant at the end of Genesis 8 is that He says it to Himself! God “said in his heart” the words of promise about never again killing everything with a flood. Then, in Genesis 9, He expresses this to Noah.
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, 10 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. 11 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.”
Here is divine restraint, God saying that God will not again do as He did with the flood. We know that one day the curtain will fall and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, but so long as the earth remains, until God says “That is it!” He will restrain His judgment. This covenant does not say that God will not pour out judgement and it does not say that God will not even allow floods to come. What it says, though, is that God will not again send the cataclysmic judgement of the worldwide flood upon the earth.
Think of the mercy of this divine act of restraint. God is saying that He will not destroy all life on the earth again until the ages have reached their conclusion. This is an act of mercy because the justification for God doing so has never gone away, namely, human sinfulness and God’s own holiness. It is not, then, that humanity has gotten better. It is simply that God has decreed that He will stay His own hand of justice. Image if we got what we deserve! What do we deserve? Simply put, we deserve another flood. But God has said that He will not do that. For this we should offer praise!
Animal Restraint – God Has Put the Fear of Man in Animals
There is even a note concerning animal restraint in the Noahic covenant, or, at least, a check upon animals concerning their relationship to human beings.
2 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. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. 4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
We have seen that Adam and Eve lived in harmony with animal life before the Fall, then, after they sinned, the whole created order, including the animal kingdom, became disordered and enmity was introduced between human beings and animals. Now, in the reordering of creation expressed in the Noahic covenant, we see two new wrinkles: (1) God will put “the fear of [man] and the dread of [man]…upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens…” This does not mean, of course, that there are not animals who would still wantonly attack human beings. But it means that, in some sense, God checked the aggression of animal life by installing this fear of man generally in the animal kingdom. And (2) man is now allowed to eat animals. This idea is introduced at the end of verse 2 with, “Into your hand they [animals] are delivered.” One of the implications of this is that, as verse 3 says, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.” Robert Alter points out that, in these verses, “Vegetarian man of the Garden is now allowed a carnivore’s diet…and in consonance with that change, man does not merely rule over the animal kingdom but inspires it with fear.”[3]This is not, of course, a green light for animal cruelty, but it does mean that consumption of animal flesh now enters man’s dominion over nature. Concerning verse 4’s prohibition of eating flesh “with its life, that is, its blood,” The IVP Bible Background Commentary helpfully explains:
While meat is now put on the list of acceptable foods, there is still a restriction on eating with the blood. In ancient times blood was considered a life force (Deut 12:23). The prohibition does not require that no blood at all be consumed, but only that the blood must be drained. The draining of the blood before eating the meat was a way of returning the life force of the animal to the God who gave it life. This offers recognition that they have taken the life with permission and are partaking of God’s bounty as his guests. Its function is not unlike that of the blessing said before a meal in modern practice. No comparable prohibition is known in the ancient world.[4]
Here again we see that the freedom of human beings to eat animal flesh is itself a gift from God that must not be abused or that must not be detached from a recognition of Him from whom the freedom came.
Human Restraint – Human Beings Must Not Murder Human Beings
Of profound significance is the fact that the Noahic covenant calls for human restraint, mainly in the area of killing other human beings.
5 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. 6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”
The issue of capital punishment is highly controversial, and it is not my intention to unpack all of its complexities here. Even so, we must recognize that in the Noahic covenant God establishes a call for restraint in the area of human violence by making murder punishable by death. The reason for this is interesting: “for God made man in his own image.” This is telling. It is telling insofar as it shows the distinction between animal and human life. Immediately after saying that it is now permissible to eat animal flesh, the Lord says that human beings are not to murder other human beings because God’s image rests on us. In other words, there is something distinct about human beings, something that separates them from animals.
Remember: the Noahic covenant is a worldwide “rebooting” of the earth and life on it. I do not mean, of course, re-creation. This is not the “new heaven and new earth” and this covenant does not give salvation. But it is a rebooting in a sense that it is a kind of “start over,” though still in the context of the reality of the Fall. God is mercifully putting up guardrails to keep humanity from careening into the abyss, and, at the heart of that, in terms of human relations, God says that we must recognize the dignity of all human beings and not kill each other!
The Noahic covenant is a covenant of fruitfulness and faithfulness.
But the Noahic covenant does not only restrain, hold back, and restrict. It also sets free and calls for fruitfulness and faithfulness.
Human Fruitfulness
We see the fruitfulness in the call at the beginning of Genesis 9 for human beings to populate the earth and have children.
1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”
Childbirth is good! Childbirth is a gift! We are meant to populate the earth! The Noahic covenant establishes the goodness of “being fruitful” and of “multiplying.” Church, have babies! Childbirth is a divine sanction, indeed, a divine command.
Divine Faithfulness
As significant and powerful and beautiful as this call to childbirth is, there is something more beautiful. I would say that it is the anchor of the Noahic covenant. I am speaking of God’s establishment of a sign that will communicate until the world’s end God’s goodness and faithfulness.
12 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: 13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 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. 16 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.” 17 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.”
The rainbow is a sign that the Noahic covenant stands! That is, it is a sign of God’s goodness. When God sees the rainbow, He remembers (v.15), that is, He zakars![5]And that means that God moves toward us in love and mercy.
Church, the Noahic covenant reminds us of the goodness of God, of the providential care of God, of the mercy of God. Even so, there will come a day when the curtain falls, when the story ends. In 2 Peter 3, Peter says these amazing words:
5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
Yes, the conditions of the Noahic covenant will meet their end when the world is destroyed by fire, when the final judgment comes upon all who have rejected God. The Noahic covenant was never intended to save us for eternity. It was intended to put guardrails around humanity, to give us basic ethical and anthropological tenets for the living of these days. But what of when the fire comes of God’s wrath finally comes against the wicked? What of the final judgement? Is there a covenant capable of doing more than the covenant with Noah? Is there a covenant capable of saving us through the fire of final judgment? Is there an ark that will carry us into glory itself, into eternity? Yes! Indeed there is! We turn yet again to Jesus’ beautiful words of a “new covenant,” a new promise that will never be broken! We read of this in Luke 22:
19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenantin my blood.”
Ah! Now we see how the covenant of the cross, the new covenant of Jesus, accomplishes what the Noahic covenant cannot.
The Noahic covenant tells us not to kill each other. The new covenant of Jesus tells us that Christ has been killed on the cross for us!
The Noahic covenant tells us that lost humanity was kept through the flood and emerged from the ark by God’s grace. The new covenant tells us that Jesus, the greater Noah, emerged from the ark of the tomb after three days to give us life eternal!
The Noahic covenant tells us through the sign of the rainbow that God will not destroy the earth by water again. The new covenant tells us through the sign of the cross and the empty tomb that all who are in Christ will be saved from the fire to come!
There is a sign greater than the rainbow, a symbol greater than even that beautiful reminder: it is the cross! And it speaks to us to tell us, “This ark is safe! God still brings His people through the flood and He will bring His people through the fire of judgment! Flee to the cross! Flee to the empty tomb! Flee there and be welcomed into the open arms of Jesus! Flee there and live!”
But more than this, just as God looks as the covenant sign of the rainbow and remembers, so too He looks at the cross and remembers! When God sees the rainbow in the sky He says to Himself, “Do not flood the earth!” But when God sees the cross and the blood of His Son Jesus over a person He says, “He is mine! She is mine! This person is forgiven! This person is my child! I will carry this person through the fire of judgment! I will carry this man, this woman, this boy, this girl home! I see the blood of my Son and I forgive!”
At the rainbow God says to Himself, “Restraint!”
At the cross God says to Himself, “Forgiveness!”
Are you washed in that blood, that sign of God’s love and mercy? All you need do is call on the name of Jesus and you will be…and God will not break His promise to love and to forgive and to see you all the way home.
[1]David VanDrunen. Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture. Crossway. Kindle Edition, pp.79-81.
[2]R.R. Reno, Genesis. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), p.126-127.
[3]Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses. The Hebrew Bible. vol. 1 (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2019), p.32.
[4]John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p.39.
[5]See the sermon immediately preceding this one, on Genesis 8:1-20.