Lesson 8 - Genesis 8 & 9

well as we continue our study of Genesis you're going to notice that we're going to spend longer and longer with each chapter this is because the chapters up to an hour are rather short they're pretty concise the information is pretty general and the principles being introduced are fairly basic so we're going to move rather rapidly through chapters 8 & 9 today open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 8 if you have a complete Jewish Bible it is page 7 Genesis chapter 8 we're going to read it all God remembered Noah every living thing and all the livestock with him in the ark so God caused a wind to pass over the earth the water began to go down also the Fountains of the deep and the windows of the sky were stopped the rain from the earth from the sky was restrained water came back from completely covering the earth it was after a hundred and fifty days that the water went down now on the 17th day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat the water kept going down until the tenth month on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains were seen after 40 days Noah opened the window of the ark which he'd built and he sent out a raven which flew back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth he then sent out a dove to see if the water had gone from the surface of the ground but the Dove found no place for her feet to rest so she returned to him in the ark because the water still covered the whole earth he put out his hand took her and brought her to him in the ark he waited another seven days and again sent the dove out from the ark the Dove came into him in the evening and there and her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf so Noah knew the the water had cleared from the earth he waited yet another seven days and sent out the Dove she didn't return to him anymore by the first day of the first month of the six hundred first year the water had dried up from off the earth so Noah removed the covering of the Ark and looked and yes the surface of the ground was dry it was on the 27th day of the second month that the earth was dry and God said to Noah go out from the ark you your wife your sons and your sons wives with you and bring out with you every living thing you have with you birds livestock every animal that creeps on the earth so that they can swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth so Noah went out with his sons his wife and his sons wives every animal every creeping thing every bird whatever moves on the earth according to their families went out of the ark Noah built an altar to Adonai then he took from every clean animal every clean bird and he offered burnt offerings on the altar I don't I smelled the sweet aroma and not and I said in his heart I will never again curse the ground because of humankind since the imaginings of a person's heart are evil from his youth nor will I ever again destroy all living things as I've done so long as the earth exists sowing time and harvest cold and heat summer and winter and day and night will not cease just as chapter seven began with these comforting words that that God invited the righteous family of Noah into the safety of the ark chapter 8 tells us that God remembered him but the verse doesn't stop there says he also remembered all the living things they came into the ark with Noah I can't stress enough how important God's living creatures what we typically call animals are to God man is certainly a bit above the animals placed into dominion over the animals yet were made of the same stuff as the animals the dust of the ground and God put that same Mishima spirit of life into both animals and mankind now I'm not trying to be an advertisement for PETA okay I'm saying we must not lose sight of the fact that to God his animals weren't throwaways no doubt early in Genesis when God had the animals parade by Adam as he named them we must not forget that Adam was also given the opportunity to select one of them as a companion not in the sense of a wife rather as a friend and no doubt this was to show us the place that man holds in the animal kingdom slightly above the animals but also the loving importance God places on all of his living creatures I only point this out because if I can be permitted to add attached a human emotion to God it was a terrible thing the day that God had to kill an animal or two to make animal skin clothing to cover Adam and Eve it would have grieved him and it grieved him when for his own good reasons it became necessary for animals to be slain on a regular basis for blood sacrifice in order to atone for the sins a lot of animals but of human beings and it must have grieved him yet again when for reasons I cannot fathom the Father creator instructed Noah and his descendants that they could now kill countless thousands then millions of his beloved creatures for food this was a huge matter okay when we're told that God knows when a sparrow falls from the sky it's because that Sparrow is one of his living creatures who no longer lives was not knowing the sparrow in the same sort of sense that a single dollar is important to reconciling accounting books rather it's because God put the life spirit into that creature now that life was extinguished we too often look at that verse only from the viewpoint of how important mankind is because it says that God remembers the numbers of hairs on our heads but that's not the entire point it's that even a bird is important to him so well before you schewe came into the world God was watching his living creatures died on account of mankind sin the Lord had to make a difficult choice he had to choose to value human beings over any and all other kinds of living beings now the second half of verse one uses a word that's familiar to us and says that God brought a rushing wind across the earth to push back the waters the Hebrew word used here is Rua in Hebrew Holy Spirit is ruach ha kodesh Rua spirit ha kodesh the holy the Holy Spirit Rua is a commonly used word in the Old Testament as a word to describe God's Spirit or sometimes just spirit in general so this rushing wind was more than just a weather event now the wind was real and it was literal but it also involves the idea that this wind has kind of a spiritual component to it because it was of God that's another example if you would have the reality of duality well after 150 days of the water rising the water receded now for the next hundred and 50 days the Teva the this floating wooden Ark that had bobbed around in floodwaters until it came to rest upon the mountains of Ararat not Mount Ararat a specific peak rather somewhere on top of one of the mountains of the extensive Ararat mountain range that is modern-day Turkey and we're told the precise day of it the seventh day the 17th month rather the seventh month the seventeenth day of the month but it would be a while before the world's only surviving family could disembark 40 more days passed and Noah sent out a raven a scavenger bird an unclean animal it didn't come back which indicated it had found food dead things as well as a place to nest likely in the now slightly uncovered mountaintops next to dove a clean animal a dove was sent out but it returned indicating it had no food source or a place to nest a week later Noah sent out another duck this time it returned was a green freshly picked olive tree leaf in its beak another week passes the Dove doesn't return indicating the water had receded to the tree line or below now quite remarkably it is well known by olive growers they never have to fear flooding that would drown and normally destroy trees because an olive tree will actually bear leaves while it's submerged under water but after talking to a botanist it was also explained to me that many varieties of trees and plants can survive both severe droughts and severe flooding and if they're left alone to heal they can once again flourish now it's interesting to note there for some reason God wants us to know the exact month to the day that certain stages of the flooding and it's receding occurred for instance we see the on the first month the first day that is the first day of a New Year's juice call at Rosh Hashanah it was safe to remove the covering of the Ark and all that remained was for the ground to dry up enough for the Ark's inhabitants to set foot on it it was on the second month the 27th day of it that God instructed nor that he could now resume life on earth surface now how interesting it is that this self same flood that destroyed the old and the corrupted also purified and made way for the new one for the clean death of that which was corrupted was needed in order to prepare for new life and again we have a type and shadow of what is to come Messiah called living water in the New Testament it's what this all pointed to our old nature's died and we're purified through this living water that cleanses isn't and and it purges this uncleanness away it sets up all the symbolic meeting of water baptism through death of the old life bound to sin we are brought to a new life bound to God well Noah well understood by now the impact of what had just transpired and in verse 20 in an absolutely appropriate response he built an altar and he sacrificed of every kind of clean animal to the Lord the first act of the new order of mankind was to honor God yet as for soon gonna see this newly purified world beginning and righteousness thoroughly understanding sin and it's awful and destructive consequences was not going to stay clean for very long but the sacrifice of know also shows us at least one rather important reason that God ordered that fourteen of clean animals that is seven pairs were brought on board the ark if Noah was going to sacrifice from every single species of clean animals which he did had there been only a single pair of each clean species brought on board the first sacrifice would have represented the extinction of that species further by performing this series of sacrifices Noah affirmed that he would take up the mantle of the line of Ceph the godly people of Israel by the way for the unclean animals used for why were they even retained instead of just being allowed to die out in the flood well without getting too graphic later on we find that several of the young clean variety of animals lives on a scavenger diet the corpses of dead people and animals must have been strewn everywhere as the waters receded can you imagine it these animals would have thrived on this huge food supply and they certainly served a useful purpose cleaning up the landscape just as Bulger's and other scavengers do the same today and we should not forget an overriding principle of our universe that everything has an opposite if there was a clean there had to be an unclaimed but I also want to make something quite clear about that which God ordains as unclean by no means are all unclean animal scavengers in fact there appears to be no behavioral pattern or physical characteristic nor particular kind of food they eat or any other thing that we can put our finger on to understand why God designated certain animals as unclean there have been many theories put forth none of them hold water we simply need to grasp that God's sovereign he makes decisions and choices that he usually doesn't reveal is reasoning behind it so if you leave here today with one understanding about clean and unclean oh I hope it's this unclean animals are not some broad category of bad animals clean animals are not inherently better than unclean animals unclean animals are not defective animals nor are the animals of less importance to God their status is nothing more nor less than a sovereign choice made by the Creator for his own good reasons and he has never shared the reasoning behind that choice with us so since I suppose Mount Sinai men have speculated about it the last two verses of chapter a reveal a couple of important pieces of information first that God accepted Noah sacrifices he found them pleasing second that God was never again going to destroy all land and habit increas and the way he had just finished doing it with a deluge of water and third please notice the phrase important phrase in verse 21 because there it says since what the human heart forms is evil from its youth the human heart forms evil from its youth what could be a more direct admission by the Almighty than this mankind has a problem we have evil in us from the earliest stages of our development and as we discussed last week where is there any reference to Satan when it comes to human beings doing evil where does God pin the problem of evil in mankind on the devil he doesn't how give me wrong seems real entices men to do evil but Satan did not create evil Satan was a created being just like anything or anyone else and he made a moral choice he became evil embodied to the fullest rather by means of deception Satan merely takes advantage of the evil inclination that's already in US where it says that the heart forms evil from its youth from its used is written as Manurewa in Hebrew this literally means from his awakening so perhaps a better rendering of that phrase would be since what the human heart forms is evil from his awakening Rabbi Judah one of the great ancient Jewish sages explains that this is referring to that moment when humanity gains self-awareness the sages argued whether this awareness took place in the womb or immediately upon birth or just shortly thereafter but either way the point is all persons are born with hearts that form evil that's what's being said here in verse 21 it is not saying that a human heart is only evil not at all it's not saying that babies are already born with a one percent evil inclination it we're not born 100% evil if you don't know God from a peanut you're still not a hundred percent evil this important statement by God is simply acknowledging that everyone is born with an evil inclination all but all are found up and said all so we've all had an equal chance to be saved by the same way but to the principle of opposites since we're all born with an evil information are also all worn with a good inclination as well now question was asked when did God so during the flood and everything abandoned the garden well up to the flood apparently man look towards the garden make sure that it look towards the garden when they were communicating with God because that's where he was from here on in the Bible of what you see that God now looks down in word to man and mayhem looks upward to God so we know that just as whatever remained of the garden was destroyed by the flood God now communicates with man from his heavenly realm from the Garden of Eden on earth be a long time before he would reestablish a place on earth where he'd what was mankind and it happened in Moses day with the building of the world from staggered immediately following the flood the earth was a very different place and what had been just a few months earlier the oceans were more extensive therefore there was less land service than before the flood the land was education until it regenerated and the only animal life that would exist would come from what was saved inside that Ark the mist that enveloped the air and water that vegetation before there was rain was gone the formerly even and temperate world climate had more radical swings now as a result seasons became more pronounced the cycle of seasons became all more critical to humans to have a plan because because the growth of plants for food dependent on cycles of temperature and rain and certain amounts of sunlight according to the time of the year but the most dramatic change from only a few months earlier was that only eight people and a handful of animals were lifted in heaven and then repopulated the surface of the earth our planet was a rather more than Li place for dope for all living creatures that lived above our oceans therefore we see that indeed Noah was the new Adam from him all future mankind is greater you and I are all related to Noah even more closely related than we are to Adam but Noah and Adam operated from very different paradigms their situations were quite at opposite poles animal was created his perfection he was created into a world of absolute perfection he was created in the image of God no however was born into a world of imperfection for although Noah was declared righteous in God's eyes Noah just like us was born with a fallen nature into a fallen because Noah trusted in a babe God God simply declared Noah righteous because he certainly wasn't sinless this most fundamental principle of salvation trusting God and being credited with righteousness as opposed to trying to earn it is the same principle we all count today it's president right here to the Old Testament Genesis as Adam was created in the image of God so no one was created so to speak in the image of Adam one era ended a new one began is universally sinful state of the world of which Noah was that patriarch represented the new basis of how God would deal with the post-flood rule and all of its aspects wide apart of how it was Fred quite a part of how it was going to be with the eventual advent of Christ and still quite a part of how it will be someday in the not terribly distant future so we are going to see now vast differences between the old world before the flood and the new post flood world immediately as we open up Genesis chapter 9 so open up your Bibles to Genesis chapter 9 which is page 8 if you have a complete Jewish Bible Genesis chapter 9 God blessed Noah and his sons and he said to them be fruitful multiply and fill the earth the fear and dread of you will be upon every wild animal every bird in the air every creature populating the ground all the fishes will see they've been hand over to you every moving thing that lives will be food for you just as I eat green plants before so now I give you everything only flesh with its life which is this blood you're not I will certainly demand that accounting for the blood of your lives either demanded from every animal and from every human being I moved a man for every human being an accounting for the life of his fellow human being whoever sheds human blood by a human being will be his own blood by his own blood Felicia for God made human beings in His image and you people be fruitful multiply swarm on the earth multiply God spoke to Don and his sons with him and he said as for me I'm here with earth establishing my covenant with you with your descendants after you with every living creature that is with you the birds the livestock every wild animal with you all the way out of the ark every animal on earth I almost averaged my covenant with you that never again will all living beings be destroyed by the waters of a flood and they will never again be a flood to destroy the earth and God added here is the sign of the Covenant I'm making between myself and you and every living creature with you for all generations to come I'm putting my rainbow in the cloud it will be there as a sign of the Covenant between myself and the earth whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow is seen in the cloud I will remember my covenant which is between myself and you and every living and the water will never again become a flood to destroy all living beings the rainbow will be in the cloud so that when I look at it I'll remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of any height of the earth and God said to Noah this is the sign of the Covenant which I've established between myself and every living creature out there the sons of Noah who went out from the ark were shem tom and in fact as the father a father of canaan these three were the sons of noah and the whole earth was populated by them Noah a farmer was the first to plant a vineyard he drank so much of the wine that he got drunk he lay uncovered in his tent Tom the brother of Canaan saw his father shamefully exposed he went out and told his two brothers Shem and the effect took a cloak they put it over their shoulders and walking backwards they went in covered her naked father their faces were turned away so they did not see their father lying their shameful exposed and when no other world from his wine he knew what his younger son had done they know and he said cursed be Canaan he will be a serpent of service to his brothers and then he said blessed be I deny the God of Shem kin will be their servant and may God enlarge the effect he will live in the tents of Shem but Canaan will be their servant after the flow after the flood Noah lived for 350 years and all Noah lived 950 years this story begins with the regeneration of humanity and the reordering society the great changes in the governing dynamics of man's existence in his relationship to his environment and his own responsibilities before God are evident right away universe dude see whereas animals were once trusting without fear of man and in women's subjugation to man before the flood now God ordains that the human dominion over animals will be greatly expanded the very same animals that so docile II appeared before Adam to be named will now be an immortal fear of man verse 3 tells us that meat is no longer prohibited as food for me animal flesh has become a reluctantly approved source of nutrition but it's not without clear and unequivocal restrictions I heard people ask how it was that NOLA got all those wild animals to enter the ark simply is it before the flood man had an entirely different relationship facts but afterwards we are seeing in these first few verses of Genesis chapter 9 a new order being established through a series of general rules and laws given to Noah after the flood the theological name for these rulings is the Noahide laws so we have to ask ourselves an important question were there universal divine laws handed down to humankind before the flood or is what we just read the first time God has done this see the matter is actually self-evident the only way for God to justifiably declare one man righteous and another man wicked is if some known standard was already in place therefore although it's not written down in earlier parts of Genesis as exploit this explicitly is over reading here in Chapter nine there had to have been an existing moral code that was binding on all humanity and at which all humanity was aware otherwise how would people know automatic moral choices and subsequently by what standard would God who separated the wicked from the good so after the flood why now was that okay for men deep meat and inanimate but up to then and it is strictly prohibited very simply it was the Lord's concession to human weakness it was first revealed that underneath as the ancient Hebrew saved his play not just because no one was called a righteous man doesn't mean he was a perfect man a man who is without sin by communities no one had a sin nature woven into him that he had inherited from Adam and even after the flood that sin nature he and his families evil inclinations continued on and it was inherited by all of his descendants us so while the Lord Analytics sentence purified the world with a flood more than anything else that great deluge was a divine judgment upon world it was a just punishment for the wickedness it was not going to rid the world of evil and then start everything all over again with clean slate it is going to be the same interestingly when we enter that thousand-year kingdom of Christ the Lord will have a certain sense purify the world in a series of great Cataclysm ending of the Battle of Armageddon but will sin and evil have been destroyed as well no will all remain human t be perfect now and without sin no but like in Noah's Flood at a certain moment in time although God as being wicked will be destroyed according to a known standard of righteousness this next time of worldwide destruction of humanity is going to be based on who has sincerely accepted his son for salvation and who has it in fact at a certain moment in time known only to the father those who he deems as righteous will be removed and placed into a spiritual mark upon what we call the rapture this event happens just before God begins his punishment of the world for its universal wickedness just as Noah and his family were placed into an ark before the God had punished the world for its universal wickedness for the flood so the flood certainly didn't eradicate sin soon followed humankind into that Ark and God needs revisions for that sad reality that idea sounds a little bit bothersome for you just remember that first Corinthians 7 Paul gives some instructions regarding divorce and this was said to be due to the hardness of men's hearts therefore divorce was an unpleasant reality woven into human societies it wasn't gonna go away not even among believers the same hardness of heart is why the Lord allowed humans post-flood to eat meat they're gonna do it anyway due to the hardness of humanity's heart so the Lord set down rules and restrictions for it even though it certainly wasn't his ideal first to also gives us an opportunity put a little bit of common common sense back into reading the Bible do not ever think if the words written do not mean what they say yet they mean what they meant within the common understanding of the Hebrew culture of that day not necessarily within the common understanding of the culture of 21st century it says here that all animals will fear and dread man now the fact is we know full well that not 100% of all animals fear man never had many animals are quite comfortable with humans because they've been domesticated and raised for that purpose sheep were told learned their Shepherd's voice not getting in too much detail just favorite common pets like dogs and cats that are learned to trust men to one degree or another the plains this but the Bible says everything or all or every it means that any general has some absolute sense all or everything does not mean 100 zero zero percent rather it means it's a general rule but there's going to be a few exceptions we might say it means the vast majority think of how in our modern speech say things like everybody's against me everything I do turns out bad I always take the same route home none of the things are so at all times without exception they're figures of speech so we have to be very careful not to read into the holy text some theological absolute when none was intact although every living creature again that's the vast majority was ok for food there was a very strict provision placed on the eating of animal flesh and it was a man could not eat the blood what was the reason for that because the blood is where the life is contained blood was only to be used for Tobias sacrifice never for human consumption blood was the seed of life and it was suitably too holy for man to be allowed to partake good and we see that the importance of blood is carried over from animals to humans thus murder which typically invited talk is the taking of human blood is specifically prohibited notice that in verse 5 God hands the duty of meeting out justice for homicide or to mankind up to now got it dealt with it himself and he dealt with it very differently than humans are they deal with it because here man is instructed that a man who kills another man is to himself be killed by a little man remember what the penalty for murder was for Cain ie when he killed his brother Abel what was it banishment from the presence of God God even went so far as to place a sign over Cana so that other humans wouldn't be tempted to take matters into their own hands and harm Cain and retribution mere separation from God was considered as sufficient punishment that was no longer the case what the ancient rabbis so brilliantly pointed out concerning these passages is that here we find God establishing the principle of earthly government civil law was hereby decreed with the Lord delegating some of his authority to human authorities later in Leviticus God would go to great lengths to define something that human societies constantly try to rewrite without their success M idea what morality and justice is we tend to call God's definition of morality and justice the law being the law of Moses the Torah now these same rabbis and scribes also came to the conclusion that if God turned over to humans the terrible manner of determining capital punishment the God authorized right to take a human life to take human blood and certainly lesser matters of life such as authority over wives children servants property lengths this was also now in man's hands and from this King what was eventually called the seven Noahide lost the null hypothesis nine were essentially the most fundamental principles of civil justice from which all other civil laws would be based we don't actually see these seven laws specifically enumerated at this point in the scriptures although thousands of years later after Christ has come of God these Noahide laws will actually play a role and the determination of the Jerusalem Council of 49 ad as to the minimum behavioral requirements for Gentiles who want to fellowship with and worship alongside of Jews who have come to believe that Yeshua is the Messiah what eventually came to be called the seven Noahide laws are the following first men were prohibited from idol worship second humans were not to commit blasphemy taking God's name in vain that's one way to do that third man is not to murder or there was to be not incest if there was no lobbying and stealing since man is not to eat blood nor was easy eat the meat of animals that had been strangled therefore there would have been drained out of them and seventh man is to submit to the authority of human government now next in verse 8 God makes a cut and as we meet Abraham on a couple more weeks and talk a little more about the fundamental nature of covenants but for now just recognize that this particular covenant is a contract that's in the form of a promise and in this case it is said to be between God and Noah but it's also a promise from God to all living flesh no one is quite properly the representative agent of all the new life on this planet this particular covenant contract is unique lateral the contract does not depend on man's response nor man's behavior it's all on God some other covenants we will eventually encounter have a mutual requirement both God and man have rules to play and this is the first covenant between man and God that is mentioned in the Torah now there's a theological belief that this covenant with Noah was actually the second covenant with mankind the first covenant being between God and Adam and it was that if Adam didn't eat at the tree of knowledge of good and evil man could stay in the garden with God well personally I think that waters down the impact of the concept of covenant and the word covenant isn't even used in that case certainly God gave Adam an instruction not to eat of that tree but just because the idea was that if you disobey me there'd be a penalty does not raise that single instruction to the level of a covenant and the Covenant that God made with Noah is this God will never again destroy the world and everything in it by flood of course he didn't leave that door open a little bit to destroy the world by this by any other means but that's another story anyway the signing of this covenant is the rainbow now I don't want to spend too much time with this but the question often comes to was this first rainbow it never existed people a Miami plan will answer to this is me here's the thing God said as many physical things in the sky to be used besides he didn't necessarily come up with a new one each time he felt a sign was named the physics of light and light refraction as it passes through moisture is well understood and we know it is not necessary for actual rain to occur never rainbow we just need a sufficient about a water content animus fear however almost universally among the ancient modern biblical scholars the conclusion was that this was the very first rainbow so I see no reason to belabor the point already disputed because I don't know why there's no way to prove it but I'd like to point out this manner of saying of God saying that when he looked upon the rainbow he would remember his comfort with all the big things not bring in any begin with the and as we discussed a couple of weeks statements of this sort are figurative God's not a man he doesn't have human attributes God is not a super human he is a wholly separate different being than a man nor are human being some type of lesser gods so God doesn't need that as a memory job I got a wall full of posted notes at home that's how my memory works these days he doesn't need that he also doesn't need an enormous notepad but I also imagine it for many generations from Noah can you imagine how relatively fresh in people's minds that flight was can you imagine every time it started raining and pouring just a little bit of anxiousness as they waited for it to stop how are you sure it must have been to look up and through the party clouds see that beautiful brilliant rainbow in the sky and remember they've got it made a promise about that at that society me who would do us all good to remember that the auth inspiring the rainbow it is so common especially for us here in Florida to see by giving it too much of a thought in fact his meant as a divine sign to all human beings from not this hasn't changed just because of two thousand years have passed for Noah's Ark well who continues chapter nine next time you

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Keywords: Genesis, Book of Genesis, Bible, Bible study, Free online Bible study, Torah, Torah Class, Torah Study, Tom Bradford, Genesis chapter 8, Genesis chapter 9, Hebrew Roots, Messianic, Noah, Noach, Noah's Ark, Flood, Great flood, clean animals, unclean animals, clean and unclean, tevah, Ararat, Mt. Ararat, Noachide laws, food, blood, sin, Old Testament

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Length: 51min 28sec (3088 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2016