Life in the New World
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2019 · 26 May 2019
Things have dried out after the flood, and now Noah and his wife and three sons and their three wives, a total of eight people, have left the ark. In Genesis 9, they have come out of the ark, built an altar, worshipped the Lord, and started to populate the new world. And verse 1 says, "And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”
God’s blessing is good news after judgment. They spent over a year on the ark, confined with all the animals on board, floating on the waves of judgment that have drowned all air-breathing life on the planet and much of the sea life as well. The surface of the earth has been recreated, with deep sea basins and high mountains. The ark has finally come to rest on the mountains of Ararat or Turkey.
And in Genesis 8:20, the first thing Noah did was build an alter which accomplished two things. It was an act of sacrifice, which expressed worship to God as well as penitence. Burnt offerings were offerings of penitence, offerings that recognized sin and the need for a substitute to bear the penalty for sin. And Noah and his family were very aware of their own sinfulness. So they offered many burnt offerings to the Lord.
God’s response in in Genesis 8:21-22 says the Lord was pleased with their offering, pleased with their hearts, and therefore God said to himself, "I will never again curse the ground on account of man, even though their heart is still depraved, I'll never destroy every living thing as I have done while the earth remains. 22 As long as this planet is here, I will not destroy it and its life in this fashion".
All of that points to the one sacrifice for sin - namely Jesus Christ on the cross. So Noah was the first priest for the new humanity. And in Genesis 9, God says life is going to go on normal and God blessed Noah in spite of their sin. We know that not long after this, the world was so sinful that God had to scatter the people all over the globe and change their languages as punishment.
And this introduces us to the Age of Grace, and it's been going on for 4,500 years up until now. Man is going to produce more sinners, populating the world again with sinners, and here we are the living proof of all of that. But during this period, God is going to be patient, God is going to be gracious with sinners, and not destroy the planet in judgment like he did in this global flood.
Someday, heaven and earth will pass away and judgment will come. In fact, that day has already been fixed. So the day of the return of Christ and ultimately the destruction of the heavens and earth that we know of is fixed, and now is the time to repent. As the people in Noah's time had 120 years to repent, we have longer than that to repent. We have already had 2,000 years since the day was fixed and the revelation was written.
But in this time, before that final judgment, we experience blessing. And the blessing that is described here is fivefold. The first blessing is procreation, the second blessing is prominence, the third blessing is provision, the fourth blessing is prohibition, and the fifth blessing is protection. The first three are positive, the last two are negative. Procreation, prominence, provision, prohibition and protection.
Here is God’s divine blessing for human society after the flood and continuing until today. These are universal blessings for all mankind. They are not limited to the people who love God; they are just general mandates and blessings that frame the life of men on the earth. They deal with family, they deal with food, they deal with health, and they deal with justice.
Let's look at Procreation in verse 1, “So God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth'". And that this is repeated in similar words in verse 7. This sort of emphasizes this section of blessing, verse 7, "And as for you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.” Notice that God said this to them, this is direct revelation.
The privilege of procreation given to the original couple in the Garden of Eden is reiterated. “Be fruitful and multiply” is a common expression for procreation. It is used numerous times. We will see this phrase used in Genesis 17, 22, 24, 26, 28, 35, 48 and 49. And so here is this reiteration of this first and primary blessing from God. Man was made in the image of God, meaning that man is transcendent.
Man is eternal, unlike animals and unlike plants. Man has a spiritual life that is not visible, and is not physical. Man has attributes of personhood, not possessed by animals. Man has self- consciousness, reason, abstract thinking. Mankind has an appreciation of beauty, emotion, moral consciousness. And mankind has the capacity to relate to other people and to God as well.
Man also has the ability to procreate this same kind of life. Animals can procreate physical life, but only man has the wonderful blessing of being able to procreate spiritual life. Mankind is not only a physical being, but a spiritual being, a rational being, a being of moral consciousness. And the sweetest and most wonderful relationships in all of life are those between a man and his wife.
God gave to all people the blessing of marriage, the blessing of children, the blessing of family. And they would produce billions of people living in sin - the horrors of which would be mitigated by marital love and family. And as you get into Genesis 10 and 11, Noah's sons fathered the nations. They were prolific. It was out of the line of one of his sons, Shem that the people of God came.
The second blessing is prominence in verse 2, “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand.” The sovereignty of man is repeated. In Genesis 1:26, God says, “Let them rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So the dominion of man was established in the original creation. And here is this prominence reestablished. Man is not only the ancestor of all human life, but the ruler over all lower forms of life. He is truly the king of the earth. He is to subdue nature, so as to use it, to shape it in the direction that will reflect the usefulness, the order, the beauty and the purpose of its Creator.
After the flood, this is still true, though it is different. This time God says, "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on all the animals". This is new. Before there was a compatibility between man and the animals, all the animals got in line and went marching by Adam as he named them. But after the fall, there was hostility between man and the animal kingdom, and that is indicated as fear and dread.
It is a blessing that animals who might harm us are afraid of us. God has wired the animals to be essentially afraid of man. The realm of animals now is no longer benign. It used to be subdued and ruled, and now it turns to fear and terror. The cursed animal world has a fear of man because of his superior intelligence. But a lion would be a threat to a man, if you are in his territory.
Man is given a more deadly rule over animals, and that is because of God's design. John Calvin said, “The providence of God it is that a secret bridle is placed on the animals to restrain their violence. God has caused them to have fear of man.” Apparently, the animals were controlled and sustained by God in the ark so that there was some kind of symbiotic relationship during that time.
The end of verse 2 says, "They are given into your hands.” God provided the entire animal kingdom for the use of man. Notice the opposite in the book "The Battle for the Beginning" says, "If evolution is true, humans are just one of many species that evolved from common ancestors. We are no better than animals and we ought not to think that we are.” That's the evolutionist view: We are no better than any other living species.
That is the rationale behind the modern animal rights movement - a movement whose reason is the degradation of the human race. And all radical animal rights advocates are evolutionists. Their entire belief system is the inevitable byproduct of evolutionary theory. We have to treat the animals the way we treat the people because they're just what we are, and they can be easily abused.
PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals maintain that killing any animal for food is the moral equivalent of murder. Eating meat is cannibalism, and man is a tyrant species detrimental to his environment. PETA, a very popular group, opposes the keeping of pets and companion animals - including guide dogs for the blind. They call this animal slavery.
There is an organization called the Church of Euthanasia. They have a web page that advocates suicide, abortion, cannibalism and sodomy as the main ways to decrease the human population. And they give on the website detailed instructions for committing suicide. And this ‘church’ only has one commandment, "Thou shall not procreate". But man is created by God in His image with a purpose and destiny.
The third is provision in verse 3, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.” Some people think that Christians should be under some kind of dietary law, because of the dietary laws in the Old Testament. But the only people under dietary laws were those in Israel under the Mosaic Law so they would learn to be set apart from their neighbor tribes.
Under the original creation, there were no dietary laws. “Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you.” If you're crawling through the desert, and you can't find anything to eat, you're going to eat anything that's moving that you can catch. In the original creation in Genesis 1:29-30, man could only eat plants. Because death hadn't entered the world. Every animal and man only ate fruit and vegetables.
Shortly after the fall, man began to eat animals. In Genesis 4:20 it tells us they began to develop livestock. Here is God's official authority to do so on those who entered into the new world. 1 Timothy 4:4-5 says, "Everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude. 5 For it is sanctified by the means of the Word of God in prayer". He is talking about food.
Do not be a vegetarian because it's a biblical issue. Meat eating has becomes a very important part of living in the new world. I don't know about you, but eating is a big deal in life of people. And God says, "Here's a whole world full of stuff. Everything that grows and everything that moves, you can eat." This is common grace. This is God just unloading the blessings of His creation.
But there are some blessings that come by avoiding certain things, and so the last two are negative. The fourth is prohibition in verse 4, “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” Don't eat live meat. There are some people who eat live meat in the history of the world, who consider that a delicacy. The picture here is raw meat. Don't eat a live animal, because God knows it’s dangerous and He is protecting you.
Why would the Bible tell us not to drink blood? Because all diseases are carried through the body by blood. The health ramifications from blood are really serious. And animal blood can transmit many deadly diseases. Noah may not have been a flesh-eater, because he was faithful to God and God had never given license to do that. Now we cook our food. And to make that possible, God gave us fire.
Finally protection in verse 5-6, “Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. 6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man.” This is the Law of God of capital punishment for social protection.
The greatest threat to the life of man comes from men and from beasts. And so God designed a law to protect people from being killed by others. And murder is a big problem in the world. What is the first sin that we find in the Old Testament? Cain killed his brother. And God gives an effective protection for this by essentially saying if somebody kills somebody, they are to be killed.
This is a new divine death sentence. Do you remember when Cain killed Abel? God had not instituted capital punishment. Do you remember that Cain, after he killed Abel, was afraid that somebody was going to take his life? Because anybody in his family who cared about Abel would want vengeance on Cain. So God in His mercy put a mark on Cain so he was not killed.
This is not personal vengeance, this is the responsibility of human society. Man is the instrument of God's vengeance on murder. Jesus confirms this. The soldiers have come into the Garden to take Jesus, and Peter with his sword cuts off the ear of the servant of the High Priest. Jesus heals him and says in Matthew 26:52, "Put your sword back in its place. For all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.”
Whomever murders a person in God's image, who is personal, and eternal, the murderer has committed the ultimate crime against God's creation. Crime in our society and killing in our society is aided by our failure to kill murderers. This is still the age of grace, and today is the day of salvation. Be thankful that God is patient to give people a chance to repent and be saved. Let us pray.