Genesis 9
McGeeCHAPTER 9THEME: New instructions and arrangements; the sin of Noah and his sonsNow we come to a new beginning. It is difficult for us to realize what a revolutionary beginning it is. The dispensation of human conscience is over, and God is putting man under governmenthe is to govern himself. We will see something of this in the covenant which God made with Noah. And let’s keep in mind that, when God made the covenant with Noah, He made it with you and me, for He made it with all mankind.
Genesis 9:1
NEW INSTRUCTIONS AND ARRANGEMENTSThe word replenish is meaningful here because we know that there was a civilization before the Flood, and now there is to be a civilization after the Flood. (When Adam was told to replenish the earth, we assume that there had been living creaturesI don’t know what to call thembefore Adam. They apparently were living creatures of God’s creation; anything I could say beyond that would be pure speculation.) Notice that the first thing God tells Noah to do is to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” There is to be the propagation of the race. Remember that God gave this command under special circumstances. Today we are in a time of population explosion, and there is overpopulation that is quite dangerous. However, Noah stood in an unique position. He and his family were the only folk around. Can you imagine driving down the freeway, going to work in the morning, and there are cars in front of you, cars to the right of you, cars to the left of you, cars behind you, cars honkingyou’re in a traffic snarl.
Then about a year later you go out on the freeway and there is not another car there. Yours is the only one. You might as well take down all the traffic lights. You won’t need them because you are the only one driving through. This would be quite an unusual experience for us, would it not? Well, this was the experience of Noah in his day.
Genesis 9:2
Another part of the covenant is man’s protection and rulership over the animal world. I take it that before this time the relationship was different. Apparently man had not been a meat eater before. All the animals were tame, and one is not inclined to eat an animal that is a pet. Remember that the animals came to Noah when the Flood was impending; they seemed to have no fear of him at all. Now the animals will fear and dread man. However, man is responsible for the animal world. Man’s treatment of the animal world is a brutal story. Man has attempted to exterminate many of the animals. Man would have slaughtered all the whales around the Hawaiian Islands for the money they could get if the government had not intervened. At one time the buffalo were in great herds in the West, but they were killed by man. Today we must have places of refuge to protect animals and bird life. It is well that we do that. The animals of Africa are being exterminated. Man is a mighty brutal creature. We need a government to protect the animals from man.
Genesis 9:3
Now God gives to man a new provision for food. Before the Flood God gave to man the green earth, the plant life, to eat. Now He tells Noah that he is able to eat animal life. There are diet faddists, and often this type of thing becomes a part of a person’s religion. I once met a lady who was a vegetarian as a part of her religion, and she was quite excited when I told her that these antediluvians were all vegetarians. She thought this reinforced her argument that we should all be vegetarians, and she had her assistant take it down in her notes.
However, I think she must have erased it later because I told her this: “I wouldn’t make too much of it if I were you because you must remember that it was a bunch of vegetarians who were destroyed in the Flood. If diet had in any way improved them at that time, they would not have been destroyed.” We see here that God now permits man to eat flesh. However, God prohibits the eating of blood.
Genesis 9:4
The blood should be drained out. The blood speaks of life; draining it indicates that the animal should be killed in a merciful way rather than prolonging its suffering and that it must be really dead. Although I enjoy the sport of hunting, I don’t like to shoot quail, for instance, because sometimes I just wound the little fellow and it crawls away so that I can’t find it. I don’t like to do that. God says that when you are going to eat animals, you are to make sure that you don’t eat them with their blood. It should be drained out, ensuring that the animal is killed in a merciful manner.
Genesis 9:5
This is an interesting statement, but not so meaningful to those of us who do not live on a frontier. However, there are certain animals even we encountersuch as skunks and opossums which may be rabid or disease-carrying rodentsthat pose a real danger to man. Now the fifth and the last statement in the new covenant is the most amazing
Genesis 9:6
Here God lays down the principle for government and protection of man. He gives the government the right of capital punishment. We have seen that in this new covenant which God has given, man is to propagate the race, he is to have the protectorate and the rulership over animals, he is given a new provision for food and a prohibition against the eating of blood. Now we see that he is given the principle of government, which is the basis of capital punishment. May I say to you that it is amazing how the attitude of the present generation has gotten away from the Bible. You see, we do not have a Bible-oriented population anymore. It is almost totally ignorant of the Word of God. As a result, we find the judges, the lawyers, and the politicians all wanting to get rid of capital punishment. They have succeeded in many cases, and I think that finally it will be eliminated totally from American culture. At the same time we have an increase in crime and the most horrible crimes taking place.
I have dealt with this subject more in detail in a booklet which I entitled, Is Capital Punishment Christian? I believe that capital punishment is scriptural and that it is the basis of government. The government has the right to take a life when that individual has taken someone else’s life. Why? Well, I think it is quite obvious that God has ruled it so in order to protect human life. Our lives are no longer safe on the streets and often not in our homes, either. Although I know that many officials would deny this, one reason is our attitude toward capital punishment. When a criminal knows that if he takes a life, his life is going to be sacrificed, then may I say to you, he’ll think twice before he takes a life. Also, there is an idea today about getting a gun-control law. May I say that the problem is not with the gun in the hand, it is with the heart inside the man. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” is a law that we had better get back on our statute books and get rid of this sob-sister stuff. Human government is the area into which all mankind has moved (Gentiles included). “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” is the basis for human government. It has not been changed as far as the governments of the world are concerned.
Genesis 9:7
This is a repetition of God’s instructions in verse Gen_9:1.
Genesis 9:8
“With your seed after you” includes all the human race.
Genesis 9:10
All of God’s creatures are included in this covenant. Isaiah predicts that someday the lion and the lamb will lie down together and that they will not hurt or destroy each other. In Paul’s Epistle to the Romans he mentions that the whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain in this present age. May I say to you that God has made this covenant with Noah and with all of His creatures until the time His Kingdom comes on earth. It is for all of Noah’s descendants and “every living creature that is with you.”
Genesis 9:11
This is God’s promise. His purpose is that He will not again destroy the earth with a flood. The next time His judgment of the earth will be by fire. We find that stated in 2 Peter 3. In the next few verses we see the picture of the covenant, and in my opinion, really a spiritual meaning of the covenant. It is sort of a sacrament, if you please. The thing which makes it that is a visible sign to which are annexed promises.
Genesis 9:12
The rainbow is more or less of a sacrament, that is, a token of a covenant.
Genesis 9:14
Notice that God says, “I will look upon it” and “I will remember.” God didn’t say that you would see it; He said that He would see it. He said He would look upon it and it would be an “everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.” That ought to be the encouragement whenever you look at a rainbow.
Genesis 9:17
This is God’s covenant, not merely with Noah but with all flesh that is upon the earth. Let me say again that the rainbow could be called a sacrament because a sacrament is a visible sign to which are annexed certain promises. The Passover feast, the brazen serpent, Gideon’s fleece, and in our day, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are such signs. Dr. John Peter Lange once made the statement, “God’s eye of grace and our eye of faith meet in the sacraments.” That is what happens when man looks at the rainbow. Faith lays hold of the promise attached to the sign. You see, the merit is in what the sign speaks of. There is no faith in a promise and there is no assurance in a signthe word and the sign go together, you see. God makes a promise and attaches a sign to it.
Now the rainbow is God’s answer to Noah’s altar. It is as if God says, “I’ll remember, and I’ll look upon it.” A friend of mine told me about a time he was traveling by plane across the country and going over a storm. The plane was up where the sun was shining, and all of a sudden he saw a rainbow that went all the way around, a complete circle. I guess that is the way God always sees it.
Genesis 9:18
THE SIN OF NOAH AND HIS SONSWe will find something that is very disappointing in the remainder of this chapter. The question arises: When man came out of the ark after the Flood and all the sinners were dead, does that mean that there was no more sin on the earth? Well, let’s look and see. Why is Ham’s son Canaan mentioned here? For two reasons. One reason we’ll see in a moment. Another reason is that when Moses wrote this record, the people of Israel were traveling to the land of Canaan, and it was encouraging for them to have this information regarding God’s judgment upon the people of Canaan.
Genesis 9:19
Here is the record of Noah’s sin. The hard fact of the matter is that Noah got drunk, and this is sin. There is no satisfactory excuse, although many expositors have attempted to find excuses for him. One excuse is that he was ignorant of the effect of wine since no one had been drunk before. You will notice that before the Flood, drunkenness is not mentioned as one of the sins. Then there are those who hold the canopy theory about the Flood. (There are many things I have not had time to mention.) The canopy theory is that before the Flood there was an ice covering which the sunlight filtered through so that grapes did not ferment before the time of the Flood and that this was something new to Noah.
Well, all I can say is that this is a new beginning in a new world, but it is old sin that is still there. This incident reveals this, and it was given to answer a big question, as we shall see.
Genesis 9:22
Now notice what God says through Noah, which became part of the Noahic covenant.
Genesis 9:25
I would have you note that God said, “Cursed be Canaan"He does not put a curse on Ham. A question that keeps arising is this: Is the curse of Ham upon the dark races? It certainly is not. To think otherwise is absolutely absurd. The Scripture does not teach it. The coloration of the skin, the pigment that is in the epidermis of the human family, is there because of sunlight from the outside not because of sin from within.
There is no curse placed upon Ham; the curse was upon Canaan his son. We do not know in what way Canaan was involved in this incident. We are given only the bare record here, but we recognize that Canaan is mentioned for a very definite purpose. Let me repeat that it hasn’t anything to do with colorit is not a curse of color put on a part of the human race. That teaching has been one of the sad things said about the black man. It is not fair to the black man and it is not fair to Godbecause He didn’t say it.
After all, the first two great civilizations were Hamiticboth the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations were Hamitic. Another question arises: Why did God give us a record of the sin of Noah? Well, if man had written the Book of Genesis, he would have done one of two things. He either would have covered up the sin of Noah by not mentioning it at all to make Noah a hero; or else he would have made Noah’s sin a great deal more sordid than it was. But God recorded it for His own purposes. First of all, as I have indicated, it was to encourage the children of Israel in entering the land of Canaan during the time of Moses. It let them know that God had pronounced a curse upon Canaan. He had pronounced His judgment upon the race. All you have to do is read the rest of the Old Testament and secular history to discover the fulfillment of this judgment. The Canaanites have pretty much disappeared. God had a further reason for recording the incident of Noah’s sin. In Rom_15:4 we read these words: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” It was recorded to let you and me know something of the weakness of the flesh. The Lord Jesus said that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. And in Gal_2:16 it is made very clear that no flesh would be justified by keeping the law: “…for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” So God has given us here the story of a man who fell, revealing the weakness of the flesh. There is no use trying to make excuses for Noah. The bare fact is that Noah got drunk. Now, maybe you as a Christian do not get drunk. But, may I say, you and I may be living in the flesh to the extent we’re just as displeasing to God as Noah was. We have, I think, a wrong conception of life in this universe that we are in. For instance, our nation has spent billions of dollars to put men on the moon, and it looks like it’s not a good place to live anyway. But we spend relatively little on how to live on this earth. But God is concerned about training you and me how to live on this earth. Let us not make some of the mistakes that are made in the consideration of this incident. We need to make it very clear that Noah did not lose his salvation. I trust that you understand that. It was an awful thing that he didthere is no excuse for it. It was his weakness of the flesh, but he was still a saved man.
Genesis 9:26
As I have mentioned before, when Moses was given this revelation from God, he was leading the people of Israel to the land of Canaan. The Israelites were descendants of Shem.