Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on July 27, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
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I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Genesis, chapter nine. It’s page seven in the Pew Bible. If you’re using one of those. We’re continuing our series on covenants. Last week we talked about the covenant with Adam.
Today we’re going to talk about God’s covenant with Noah. And I’ll just remind you that next week we will be looking at the ministry of deacons, the need for them and the ministry that they are to have in the church. The week after that, we’ll be looking at their qualifications and also the selection process and appointment of deacons. Then the week after that, we’ll come back to covenants. Today we’re reading Genesis 9:1 17.
God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth. Every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are placed under your authority. Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you.
As I gave the green plants, I have given you everything. However, you must not eat meat with its lifeblood in it. And I will require a penalty for your lifeblood. I will require it from any animal and from any human. If someone murders a fellow human, I will require that person’s life.
Whoever sheds human blood by humans, his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image. But you be fruitful and multiply. Spread out over the earth and multiply on it. Then God said to Noah and his sons with him, understand that I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you. Birds, livestock and all wildlife of the earth that are with you.
All the animals of the earth that came out of the ark. I established my covenant with you that never again will every creature be wiped out by flood waters. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you. A covenant for all future generations.
I have placed my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all the living creatures. Water will never again become a flood to destroy every creature. The bow will be in the clouds and I will look at it and remember the permanent covenant between God and all the living creatures. On earth.
God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and every creature on earth. May we pray? Heavenly Father, once again we thank you for your word that it leads us to salvation, that it leads us how to live our lives. We thank you that it gives us comfort and strength in times of difficulty and in weakness. Father, we ask that it would speak to us today that you would show us any changes that we need to make in our lives, any new commitments that you may ask of us.
And that if anybody here today does not have a covenant relationship with you, that they will place their faith in Jesus Christ, that through his death, burial and resurrection, they might have eternal salvation in and through him. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen. Just want to give a special credit to I’m reading a book called God’s Kingdom Through God’s Covenants. The authors are Gentry and Wellem.
It’s a very helpful book. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in it, but it is a good resource. So we’re talking about covenants and it’s a way to see structure in God’s word. Some different structures we talked about last week. There’s the Old Testament and the New Testament, or you can divide it up between the law and the prophets.
In the New Testament, you can look at the different types of books, like the books of poetry, the historical books, the Gospels. And when we come to covenants, it’s another way of seeing how God has divided his word. And there are six covenants that we are looking at in this series. We looked at the Adamic covenant last year. That was last week.
Sorry, that was to all of humanity. Today we’re looking at the covenant with Noah. That comes down to his family. And then we’ll be looking at Abraham, and it comes down to Abraham’s family. And then to Moses and to David and to finally the new covenant.
And the very center is the one with Jesus Christ. And so it is that all of the covenants are are pointing to the coming Messiah so that they would understand who he was when they came.
My iPad is blinking at me for some reason. What is a covenant? Gentry and Wellem give this definition. A covenant is a ceremony or legal process whereby people who are not kin are now bound as tightly as any family relationship. And from the beginning, God established a picture of us, what a covenant is.
It’s more than just a contract in that he established the covenant of marriage. So marriage is the closest thing to a covenant relationship with God that we have and when we talk about having a covenant with God, he desired two things. He wanted us to have a covenant relationship with him. And he wanted us also to have relationship of representation that we would bear his image in this world. So we talked about these things last week.
How God created mankind not because he was lonely. He created mankind not because he needed anything from mankind. He didn’t create mankind because he wanted mankind to see serve Him. He created people because he wanted to have a relationship with them. A relationship that’s similar in many ways to what we desire in a spouse.
But he not only wanted a covenant relationship, but he also wanted covenant representation. That’s why God created man in his image, to represent him in this world, to demonstrate how God is that he loves the world and that he wants to provide for salvation to others. We talked last week. There are two things that I wanted you to remember. The first one was that God wanted everybody to have a covenant relationship with us.
And he wants that relationship to be personal. He wants it to be fulfilling, he wants it to be perfect, and he wants it to be intimate. The second thing is that God wants you to represent him in this world. He wants you to be one of his children so that you display his kindness and his love and his grace to all. Let’s go to Genesis chapter six now, verses five through seven.
And we want to see what was the situation like before the Flood. This is what we read in the account. When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth. He was deeply grieved. And the Lord said, I will wipe mankind whom I created off the face of the earth together with the animals, creatures that crawl, the birds of the sky, for I regret that I made them.
The earth had come to a point where just about every living person did not have a covenant relationship with the Lord. And they certainly were not covenantally representing him in the world. The situation was terrible. It was widespread. Human wickedness was everywhere on the earth.
It also tells us that it was complete because it says that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time. It’s all people could think of 24 hours a day. They were evil in all of their thoughts. And it never came to an end because it was continually going on all the time. And in the midst of this wickedness, only one man and his family still had a relationship with the Lord.
Only one man still served as the representative image of God in the world and that man was Noah. It goes on to say in verses 11 through 13 that not only had man become corrupted, but sin also affected all of God’s creation. Says the earth was corrupt in God’s sight. The earth was filled with wickedness. And God saw how corrupt the earth was.
For by this time, every creature had corrupted its way on the earth. That’s why God said, I have decided to put an end to every creature, for the earth is filled with wickedness because of them. Therefore I’m going to destroy them along with the earth. The destructive choice of Adam and Eve had not only affected people, but it had ruined all of the world. It had ruined all of the animals, and they had all come to this evil point that God was going to bring destruction upon it.
What was the original creation like? We can go to Isaiah, chapter 11, verses 6 through 9 in your Pew Bible. It’s page 6:10 if you want to read along with us. And we’re going to read what the original creation was like, because we see here a picture about what the new creation will be like in the millennial kingdom one day when God will restore everything to a good state. In that day in the past and in that day in the future, it says that the wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat.
The calf, the young lion and the fattened calf will be together, and a child will lead them. The cow and the bear will graze and their young ones will lie down together. And the lion will eat straw like cattle. An infant will play beside the cobra’s pit, and a toddler will put his hand into a snake snake’s den. They will not harm or destroy each other on my entire holy mountain, for the land will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is filled with water.
How was nature before destructiveness and sin entered the world? Everything only ate plants. They didn’t feed lion’s meat. They were eating grass just like everyone else. And we see again in Isaiah’s prophecy what it was like in the original creation and what it will be like one day.
Genesis 1:31 tells us that God made a good world every day. It says he looked at what he had made and it was good. And finally, in verse 31, it says that God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. God had given people everything that they needed. God gave them everything good.
There were no problems in the world. There was no sin. But Adam and Eve made a choice to not follow God, but instead to go their own way. And they gave themselves over to following Satan instead. But when Adam and Eve became imperfect, God still gave them two things.
He gave them a promise and he gave them provision. What was the promise? In Genesis 3:15, we read, I will put hostility between you and the woman. God is talking to the serpent here, between your offspring and her offspring. And it’s very specific.
It doesn’t say they, but it says, he, pointing to one man, one day will come and strike the head of the serpent and destroy it. And in the process, that person will have his heel injured. It was a promise of the coming Messiah that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ when he died on the cross. But God also made a provision for them. When Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden, it says, they did what?
Here’s your test today. What’d they do? They hid. Why do people hide? They’re embarrassed.
They’re ashamed. They feel guilty. They feel I can’t come out in the presence of this person because I’ve offended them or I’ve hurt them. But God provided for them because in their shame, it says, they realized they were, what? Naked.
And we’re not just talking about physical nakedness here. They feel emotionally and personally exposed.
God made provision for them so that they could once again stand in his presence without shame. He shed the blood of an animal and he took the skin skins of that animal. And what did he make for them? He made them clothes. These two things are a picture of what this coming promise is going to do.
The coming Messiah, his blood is going to be shed. We read this In Ephesians, chapter 1, verses 7 through 8, because it tells us there that in him speaking of Jesus, we have redemption through his blood. And with that redemption comes forgiveness of our trespasses. And it says that it’s given according to the riches of God’s grace. It’s given to us.
It’s a gift. And he pours this out richly on us with all wisdom and with understanding. It was pointing to the fact that blood would be shed one day. The promise would be fulfilled. But also a provision is made, because just as that animal gave his skin to cover Adam and Eve, Jesus Christ becomes our covering when we are placed in him in salvation.
I read from First Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 30. It is from him, speaking of Jesus, of God the Father, that you are now in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us. In Christ Jesus we have righteousness, we have sanctification, and we have redemption. When God looks at us as believers. He doesn’t see us.
He sees us being in his Son, Jesus Christ. Romans 8:1 says, Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are again in Christ Jesus. Therefore in Romans 13:14, we read, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. God made a provision for Adam and Eve by giving them a covering. And we have the same provision today in Jesus Christ.
Let’s go back to Genesis chapter six, verse eight. We’re going to see that Noah had a covenantal relationship with God, just as Adam did. He was a representative of God and he had a relationship with God. In Genesis 6:8 we read, Noah found favor with God. In spite of all of the world and everyone around him.
He was still following the Lord. Verse 9 says, these are the family records of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among his contemporaries, and Noah walked with God. The first thing we see is that he is a covenant representative of God. He is in the image of God because he is walking blameless among everyone.
He is a righteous testimony of what a relationship with God is supposed to look like. But he is also in a covenantal relationship with God. Not only was he created in God’s image, but he was created in God’s likeness. And we talked last week that that same term talks about a father bearing a son likeness. There is this close bond of kinship.
And even though they are different, the son still has a relationship with the Father and recognizes him and looks like him. That’s why it says that Noah walked with God. Wherever you saw Noah walking, God was there with him. And Noah lived his life as if God was right there with him. It helped him to make the right decisions.
It helped him to do the right things because they were together in friendship. Genesis 6:13. A further example of the fact that Noah had a close relationship with the Lord is that in verse 13 it says that God said to Noah, God spoke to Noah as they were walking along together. In verse 17 through 18, this is what he told them. Everything on earth will perish.
But I will establish my covenant with you and you will enter the ark with your sons, your wife and your sons wives. So here we have this idea of covenant. There was a covenant with Adam. Now God is making a covenant with Noah. The wording here is a little bit different.
God says, I will establish my covenant with you. Usually it talks about cutting a covenant with someone. The way that they would sign a covenant was to cut a covenant, which isn’t mentioned here. And I’ll Explain that in just a minute. But what does it mean to cut a covenant?
Well, typically, what they would do not only in God’s realm, but also in all the world, if they were making a covenant agreement between two parties, they would take animals, they would kill the animals and cut them in half or tear them in half. And they would put one half of the animal on the left side and one half of the animal on the right side. And the parties would walk between the two animals that were cut apart. They were cutting a covenant, and that was symbolic. They were saying, if I break my part of the covenant with you, may I be torn apart like these animals.
And so it is today. We still sometimes hear the term that we cut a deal. Have you ever heard that terminology? It goes all the way back to this. But aren’t you glad when you buy a car that they don’t cut animals apart and make you walk down the middle of them?
We don’t do that anymore. It’s a little different here, though. It doesn’t say that God says, I’m going to cut a covenant with you, because he’s not at first cutting a new covenant. What he’s saying is he’s going to establish my covenant with you, a covenant that he already had made with Adam. He’s saying, I’m going to say that this covenant is going to continue on with you.
And that covenant was again, that as Adam bore the image of God and represented God in the world, Noah is going to do the same thing. And as Adam was created in the likeness of God to have a father, son relationship with God. So God is saying, noah, I’m providing this same arrangement with you. The covenant, a relationship. The covenant of representation are here promised to be continued with Noah.
Genesis, chapter 9, verse 1 through 17. We’re now at the end of the flood. We’re not taking time to go through that today. But at the end of the flood, we find that there is now, when they come off the ark, a new beginning. And I want you to listen to see if there’s any familiar language here that you’ve heard once before.
It says, God blessed Noah and his sons, and he said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Have we heard that before anywhere? Way back in Genesis 1. Again, it’s this picture that it’s a new beginning. We’re continuing a covenant that had been for all of mankind and is going to continue with Noah and his family.
Verse 2 says that the fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, they are placed under your authority originally. What was all placed under Adam’s authority? All of the earth. He was to take care of it. He was to shepherd it.
He was to be the gardener. And so God is reaffirming, Noah, you’re going to do the same thing. Now, just as there is a new beginning, and we hear these similar words, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, there are other similarities between the first creation and this new beginning. In Genesis 1:2, we read, the Earth was formless and empty. Darkness covered the surface of the watery depths.
Genesis 6. Five, we hear something kind of similar. It talks about how wickedness was widespread. It’s almost a picture of the darkness that was there before the original creation. And it tells us that it wasn’t only just there, but it covered all the surface of the watery depth.
And so in Genesis 6. 5, the evil says that it was everywhere. It was all the time, and it was rampant. And just as water was over the depths in Genesis 1:2, so before the new beginning, in Genesis 7:20, it says that the water was completely covering all of the mountains, even more than by 20ft. What are some other similarities?
In Genesis 1:2, it says that the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. And that word spirit there is ruah in the Hebrew language. And when we get to Genesis 8. One, we have that same word, ruah. It says that God caused a wind to pass over the earth before the new beginning started.
Same word, different context. In Genesis 1, it’s the spirit of God, whereas here it is the wind of God. But there’s the similarities between the two. Genesis 1:9, God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And so again in Genesis 8:14, on the 27th day of the month, the earth that had been completely covered with water, the dry land, started to emerge.
And in Genesis 1:11, God said, Let the earth produce vegetation. In Genesis 8:11, Noah sent out the dove, and it came back with the vegetation that once again was beginning to grow on the earth. Then we come back to where we started. God blessed Adam and Eve and said, be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. And then in Genesis 9, God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
As we continue to look there now in Genesis 9:1 17, we’re going to see that the old Covenant that was given to all of mankind is going to continue. But there are some new elements. Things have now changed in this new world. Verse two, it tells us that the fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth. When Adam was in the garden, all the animals came to him two by two, and he named them.
And when Noah went into the ark, what did all the animals do? They all came to him two by two. There wasn’t this fear between man and animals. But as they come off the ark, God says that that relationship is not going to continue. If there’s a rabbit in your yard now and you approach it, does it run towards you?
No. Things have changed. Everything runs away from us. The second thing that we see is in verse three. It says that every creature that lives and moves will now be food for you.
As I gave the green plants, I have given you everything. So it is Adam and Eve. They were vegetarian. All the animals were vegetarian. But in this new world, animals are going to be afraid of people because people are going to start doing what to them.
They’re going to be eating them for food and sustenance. The third thing we find here is that God says that he’s going to require a penalty for your lifeblood. In verse five, we learn for the first time that now God is saying that man is created in my image. Every life is important. The life of women, the life of men, the life of older people, middle aged people, children, the lives of even those that are still in the womb.
Every life is in the image of God. And because of that, if anyone is murdered, which means that there is intentional hatred, there is an intent to kill somebody and to harm them, then God is saying that all of the world, all people, all governments now need to hold that person responsible. Because that individual, their life alone, if it were the only one, represents me in this earth and they have to suffer the punishment. Verse 6 says, Whoever sheds human blood by humans, his blood will be shed. And here’s the reason for God made humans in his image.
Verse 8.
Here we have the new covenant that he establishes with Noah. God said to Noah and his sons with him, understand that I am establishing my covenant with you and, and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, birds, livestock and all wildlife of the earth that are with you, all the animals of the earth that came out of the ark. God’s new covenant is, I establish my covenant with you that never again will every creature be wiped out by floodwaters. There will never again be A flood to destroy the earth. We have local floods, we have larger floods.
But never again is God going to destroy the whole world in this way. And in verse 12, we continue to read about the covenant. And he promises at Noah that he’s going to give them a sign. God said, this is the sign of the covenant I’m making between me and you and every living creature with you. A covenant for all future generations.
I have placed my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures. Water will never again become a flood to destroy every creature. The bow will be in the clouds and I will look at it and, and remember the permanent covenant between God and all the living creatures on earth. And God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and every creature on earth.
In Hebrew, there is not a word for rainbow. So what is it called here? It’s just a bow. So we’re talking in essence about a bow and arrow. And a bow is shaped like what?
And so the rainbow is. Now it’s interesting because when you look at a rainbow, if you think about it as being a bow and arrow, where is that arrow aimed at? Is it aimed at the earth and mankind? It’s aimed where God was showing how serious he was about this. It kind of goes back to cutting the covenant.
You know, I’m not going to break this covenant because it would harm me. And so it is that when we see the bow, the arrow is, is aimed at God. It’s his promise to us that he’s never going to destroy us again by means of the flood. Hebrews 11:7, we find a short commentary on Noah’s life. It says, by faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, he built an ark to deliver his family.
And by faith, he condemned the world. And he became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. And so it is. Noah is an example of faith for us. And as we come to conclusion here today, the question is, have you followed the example of Noah?
Are you a person who has faith in God? And we could emphasize the fact that Noah spent 100 years building the ark. And Noah was saved because he built the ark. It was all because of his effort. But when it comes to Hebrews 11:7, it doesn’t say that he was saved by his effort of building the ark, it says that by faith, after he was warned and was not yet seen.
And then it goes on to say that he’s an heir of righteousness that comes comes by faith. Noah heard the bad news from God. He heard the news that destruction is coming because of sin. And Noah had faith in God because he believed the bad news. He could have just brushed it off and say, well, that’s impossible.
That’s never happened. But he believed God that something that he had never seen before, that nobody knew was going to happen. Then Noah heard the good news. And the good news was, even though I’m going to destroy it, if you build this ark according to my instructions, you can enter it with your family and you can be saved. It’s kind of a picture of the gospel here because God presented the bad news, but then the good news was you can be saved.
In the same way Jesus Christ is, is like the ark for us. God says you can be saved if you come into Jesus Christ, if you come into the gospel. So even though there’s bad news, there’s still good news. The ark is the picture of salvation in Jesus Christ. And how do we get into that ark?
Well, Noah, according to Hebrews chapter 11, he did it by faith. He entered into the ark just as we enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ by believing God and placing our faith in him that his death, his burial and his resurrection were sufficient to give us salvation. Now, Noah’s faith did produce works, but it wasn’t that he built the ark and then he placed his faith in God. He placed his faith in God and there were works that followed after that. His faith showed evidence in what he did.
But again, the emphasis is it was faith in God that saved Noah. And when he entered by faith into that ark, then when he came out, we come to the end of our gospel where we always talk about there is a new what, there’s a new creation. When we place our faith in Jesus Christ, that new creation begins in us. There is a new life, there is change. But ultimately we look forward forward to the day when God will restore everything to the new creation that he is promising to us.
So my plea to you today is if you’ve not placed your faith in Jesus Christ, if you’ve not entered into him in salvation, that you would tell the Lord today that I’m a sinner. I recognize the bad news, that destruction is coming. But I want to enter into Jesus Christ and receive his righteousness by believing that his death, his burial and his resurrection provide the way for me to have salvation. May we pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have made covenants with us, that you want to have a relationship with us.
May we come into that relationship and realize that now we are here to represent you in the world in a worthy way so that others also might come to faith. Work on our hearts, Father, to show us any decisions that we need to make today. And now, as we sing again, let us come before you with thanksgiving and praise for what you have done. It’s in your son’s name that we pray. Amen.