Clough Genesis Lesson 32

The Noahic Covenant; the rainbow – Genesis 9:8-16

We’ve studied the three portions of the Noahic Covenant, and we’ve shown that the Noahic Covenant is still in force in New Testament time. We’ve shown this because number one, the allowance to eat meat is repeated in 1 Timothy 4:3-4; secondly, that meat is to have the blood drained from it, that provision is given to all members of the human race, not just Christians, not just Israelites, Acts 15:19-20, and the sword of capital punishment is repeated in Acts 25:11 and Romans 13:4.

Now it always turns out every time when I teach the passage on capital punishment that there is a great deal of resistance among some Christians to really admit that as a Christian they could be involved in capital punishment. I have never taught the passage where I haven’t got basically these arguments and it’s good because these are arguments that have gone on again and again. Last week I showed you these three arguments, namely: capital punishment does not deter evil, this is often used and the answer to that is perhaps capital punishment would deter evil if it were administered biblically; and besides the main purpose isn’t just simply an immediate deterrence of evil. Secondly, an argument against capital punishment is that it makes mistakes and who wants to be in the position of having made a mistake in capital punishment, it’s an irreversible mistake. And the answer to that one is simply that God ordained capital punishment for a fallen world, that His own Son was the victim of the greatest miscarriage of justice the world has ever seen and so therefore with those the argument falls by the wayside. So therefore with those the argument falls by the wayside. Three, that capital punishment is sub Christian ethically and we spent some time answer that from the Sermon on the Mount last week.

Now one of the prominent authority’s representative of that circle of Christians who disagree with us is John Yoder [sp?], who is one of the scholars for the Mennonites and he has insisted that the passage of Romans 13, which speaks of the sword, is only intended to be interpreted allegorically, that the sword is only a symbol for justice. This was Dr. Yoder’s position in a famous 1960 debate with Gordon Clark in the pages of Christianity Today. However, Gordon Clark answered Dr. Yoder’s position in the following words, keeping in mind that the debate is what is the sword in Romans 13. Since Yoder had said that the sword is symbolic Clark says: “Is not this a measure of desperation? What are swords used for? Is taxation, mentioned in the same passage, also a symbol of civil authority without any reference to extracting money from the pockets of people?” We would also add if that would be I would gladly give up capital punishment to make tribute taxes and dues and customs in the New Testament only symbols, but no person yet has made taxation symbolic. So therefore, Clark continues, “No, such an interpretation completely gives away the weakness for the case for symbolism. In other words, the opponents of capital punishment offer no theory of civil government, they serious misinterpret the Bible and they are in the conflict with the principles of Christian ethics.”

So we can go on now, having dealt with the capital punishment issue of the Noahic Covenant, and go on to Genesis 9:8. Here we have the section that deals with the content of the rest of the covenant. “And God spoke unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, [9] And I, behold, I establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you; [10] And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.” Now in this section we have the origin of the word “covenant.” “Covenant” is a word we have to pause over, make sure we understand it. The modern word, synonym of the word “covenant,” easier to understand, is “contract.” It means contract; contract between two or more parties.

The Bible is heavy with contracts; contractual argumentation is the basis of the Bible. All law in the Bible is contractual, it is a contract between Yahweh and the nation Israel; it establishes the law code of the Old Testament, for example. So “contract” forms a central theme. You say well what’s so important about that? Several things: first and primary, a contract requires literal interpretation. If God enters into contract with a party the only way you can tell whether the contract has been violated or not is by literal interpretation of the contract. How else are we going to determine? Are we going to say oh well, this is only intended to be a symbol? If it was only intended to be a symbol then we don’t have to have any literal fulfillment of the contract to a term. So it’s precisely the contractual nature of the Bible that forces us to a literal hermeneutic, or a literal rule of interpretation. This is what makes us premillennialists, because we believe, contrary to the amill and the postmill that God’s eschatological covenant, are covenants or contracts which must be fulfilled literally. So we have a literal interpretation deriving from these contracts.

Another thing that this forces us into, besides literal interpretation of the Bible, and you remember that when somebody says why do you interpret the Bible literally, you interpret the Bible as you would any literary document, or any legal document. The law isn’t interpreted allegorically, at least not until recently, in the courts; the Constitution now is being interpreted allegorically by the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court wants to make law by itself. But traditionally this wasn’t the case.

Dr. Albright, who was the father of American archeology, made this observation about these Biblical contracts. He said isn’t it interesting that in all of history only one nation ever made contracts with their God, and that was Israel. Now what does it mean to make a contract with God? That means that there must be, therefore, verbal revelation. So unlike our liberal clergy friends I hold to verbal revelation, when God speaks He speaks in human language. He doesn’t speak a heavenly language; there’s no endless ceaseless babble, a sigh of higher piety because somebody speaks in a heavenly tongue. What language do you suppose is spoken in heaven? A language that is understandable according to John in the book of Revelation. So therefore since there is no such thing as a heavenly language but only human language, then we have the fact that God speaks to us in history; not allegorically, but plainly.

What about this Noahic Covenant, how important is it? First we want to look in Genesis 9:9-10 at the parties to the covenant. Are you, for example, in contract with God over the Noahic Covenant? Something all of you ought to look at and think about as you read the text: are you a party to the Noahic Covenant? And the answer in verses 9-10 is yes, because you are a seed of Noah. In your genes you have the genes of Noah and his wife, and their sons, at least one of their sons; most of us probably come from mixed stock so we have genes from two of their sons and maybe even three. So we are the sons of Noah and therefore we find all men are contractees, parties to the contract. But moreover in verse 10, not only are all men in contract with God through the Noahic Covenant, it says “every living creature,” so the entire animal kingdom is in contract with God through Noah. This means believers and unbelievers, this means whether the non-Christian acknowledges it or not, he is under God’s contract at least at this point. True, he’s not saved, but yet he is under a contract with God. So before the gospel is ever even taught to a non-Christian that non-Christian, unregenerate, one whose mind has been darkened to the Word of God, that person is party to the Noahic Covenant. Well what does it mean?

Genesis 9:11 gives the legal terms of the Noahic Covenant. You’ve heard the thing, always read the fine print before you sign your name, and if you personally today are one of the co-signees of this covenant, then read the fine print. Verse 11 applies to you; verse 11 applies to all men. “I will establish My covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a…” and it’s not the word for “flood,” the word here in the Hebrew is mabbul and mabbul translates to cataclysm, it’s a cataclysm, a cataclysm of water. That’s why the qualification is in verse 11, notice the words “waters of a flood,” “waters of a cataclysm.” The word by itself might not indicate a watery cataclysm, but with water we know what it means, it’s a technical term in the Bible; it’s not just a flood, but a watery cataclysm, catastrophe. And “neither shall there be any more a cataclysm,” a watery one in context, “to destroy the earth.” Notice in verse 11, “to destroy all of the earth.” So the earth becomes involved in this, not only all men, all animals, all the earth, the whole geophysical system. But that’s not all; if we look at the legal term and we notice that they flow out of verse 11 and we see it says God is going to restrain chaos in nature; that’s the essence of the contract. He will restrain the chaos in nature to the point there will never be a watery cataclysm on planet earth again.

Now let’s start deducing some doctrine from this. In order for God to fulfill this legal term what does he have to do. Let’s just think a minute, just physically, forget theology, forget spiritual things a moment, just think in terms of every day physical concrete terms. If you were God and you had promised the human race, verse 11, what would you have to do to carry out your promise? Well, you’d have to have perfect control, at least over the oceans. You’d have to insure that the waters of the oceans wouldn’t be moved onto the continents, onto the land. So you’d have to have at least perfect control over the ocean. You’d also have to have perfect control over the continents because they could sink and be buried. So in this one clause already we’ve developed the fact that it forces to a sovereign control of God over both ocean and continent, or over the entire face of the earth.

But that’s not all; God not only has to have control over all the face of the earth to carry out this term of the contract but let’s just suppose here’s the planet earth and let’s draw a dotted ring around the planet earth, and let’s suppose that inside that ring we have established that God has perfect control; He controls all forces of whatever kind, gravity, magnetics, electromagnetics, whatever the forces are within that sphere. And He has to, we have found, because if He doesn’t then He can’t answer verse 11; verse 11 falls null and void and it’s unsupportable unless it’s backed up with powerful perfect control in these areas. Fine, but what does this tell us about something out here. Let’s suppose we have an object, an extraterrestrial object that swings by planet earth. We have been lucky in our own generation, in face we have been very blessed since the time of Christ or earlier that this earth has not had a major hit by any large extraterrestrial body in a populated area. Those of you who have gone to the crater out in Arizona, can you imagine what would happen if that size body impacted on Dallas. “Big D” would suddenly become a “little d,” an infinitesimally small “d”. So the earth has not received this kind of impact; God has been gracious. It’s not to say, incidentally, it won’t happen in the future. But it is to point out that God has to have control over all extraterrestrial bodies because if he doesn’t one can swing by and through tidal attraction you can have a flooding of the earth, in violation of verse 11.

So now we deduce, not only does verse 11 teach that God must have perfect control over oceans, perfect control over continents; He must have perfect control over space nearby the earth. But then we can do our diagram once again and say okay, let this be the solar system, and let us establish a boundary of control around the solar system, and then say inside that sphere God has perfect control, but now we still can’t keep the contract term of verse 11 because we always have something outside of the boundary of control. So as you can see, we can argue this thing by iteration, time after time after time, until we can prove that throughout the length, breadth, height and depth of the universe there must be perfect control in order to bring about verse 11.

Genesis 9:11, innocuous though it may seem, trivial though it may seem when you first read it, is a proof by sheer deduction that God must be claiming, in making the contract, He must be claiming total sovereignty over all of history over all time. Throughout the length and height of the space/time universe God must sovereignly control, otherwise the legal term fails; it’s just a lot of smoke.

Now to show you that the biblical authors did precisely what I have just done, that they reasoned precisely along these lines, that the Noahic Covenant isn’t something to just sweep away and say well, that’s a sweet little Sunday School story, let’s trace the theme of the Noahic Covenant through the Bible and watch how it forms like the string of a necklace, it ties all the beads together. Turn to Job 26, stay with it physically, in the physical picture, then I’ll show you the spiritual benefit that flows but we don’t want to get to the spiritual application too fast because if we do then we won’t appreciate the basis for it.

Incidentally, right here some of you who have discussions who think that the people in the Bible believed the earth was flat and sat on pillars, you know, this stuff that you get in social studies or something, notice Job 26:7, it’s one of the classic texts in the Bible to prove that at the time the Bible was written the people knew that the earth hung in empty space. They weren’t naïve; the Egyptians had already measured the circumference of the earth and it doesn’t require an advanced student if geometry to know that you can’t measure spherical circumference of a flat earth. So people in the ancient world knew quite well that the earth was round; they had already ascertained that the circumference of the earth was approximately 25,000 of our miles; they already knew that the earth basically hung in empty space.

Job 26:8, it says “He binds up the waters in His thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them. [9] He holds back the face of His throne, and spread His cloud upon it.” Now verse 9 is interesting. It tells you where the face of God’s throne is; right here, from where you sit today, you’ve got a direction indicator in verse 9. You ought to know where you can point to where the throne of God is locally because it says it’s where He spreads His cloud. Well, where He spreads His cloud is up. I was in a class at tech one time discussing a certain point of theology and philosophy and the instructor who invited me into the class facetiously asked on which side of the earth does one point up? To which I pointed out that if you can show and prove to me that God considers the universe after the model of Euclid then I’ll answer you. But if instead God views the universe after Riemann geometry, non-Euclidean geometry, then your question is stupid. The point is that God apparently doesn’t view the universe the way we do. I obviously, wherever we point up in some way that, if we draw a line up, perpendicular to any point on the earth’s surface it goes to the throne of God. Now how this goes we don’t know; the mathematics of geometric space are extremely complicated… extremely complicated! All we have are some models of it, so that’s a very foolish question.

But here it clearly states that if you stand right where we’re standing and point up, perpendicular to the earth’s surface, you are pointing at the throne of God. And in all references in the Bible where they see God is always up to the location on planet earth where it is. And since the visions last sometimes for hours, we don’t have them seeing the vision in the eastern part of the sky and while they’re viewing the vision is moving over to the west part of the sky as the earth rotates around the point of God’s throne. Always the vision remains overhead, regardless of how long the vision lasts. So the perpendicular line always points to the throne of God. Now so strong is the Bible for this that when God’s throne does appear in history, if you ever have the occasion to see this among the handful of human beings that have ever seen it, you would notice, and the only way that they describe it isn’t that the throne appears in the sky, as sort of a projection from outside the universe into the universe, the way all the people have ever witnessed it describe it is that the sky parts and it’s as though there’s a corridor of empty space that starts from where you are, along this perpendicular line all the way to the point in the throne of God. And they describe it as the parting of the curtain, the sky or the heavens were opened and the verbs are all verbs that you would use to open a tent. So that’s the picture of the throne of God; it’s there and when the sky is parted you can see it. That’s how awesome this whole thing is.

Now Job 9:10 is the Noahic Covenant, “He compasses the waters with a boundary until the day and night come to an end.” You see, in order to praise God and to have a stable God you have to have a stable creation of God, therefore the Noahic Covenant is crucial.

Turn to Job 38:8; once again we see the theology of the Noahic Covenant under girding the basic things that the people of the Bible do. “Who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb, [9] When I made the cloud its garment, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, [10] And broke up for it my decree, and set bars and doors,” and in verse 11, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” So you have obviously a case where there’s restraint.

Now borrow something, those of you who have been here over the weeks that we’ve been in Genesis, borrow something from what we said long ago. What did we say is the thing that the waters often symbolize in the Bible? Chaos; so watch this. As I start to take you through this verse reference watch how the Noahic Covenant, which originally looks just physical, has no spiritual application whatever, looks that way, and it’s talking about God restrains chaos in nature. Now that’s the picture of the Noahic Covenant in a simple straightforward physical way. But now as we start to unroll the progress of revelation you watch what the prophets do with it.

Turn to Psalms 29; in this psalm of David, a praise psalm of God, there is some solid content to the praise; it’s not a people going around in some sort of a spastic dance saying praise the Lord, praise the Lord; it’s talking about real praise, not this fake stuff. While I was in California the principle of this Christian high pointed out one of the most outstanding charismatic churches in the United States was going to form a Christian school and they called him because he’s an advisor for setting up Christian schools and they were just going to go right into it, no planning, don’t think it through, and the man called them up and said can you please help me here and do this and that. He said well, do you have your staff picked; what are the qualifications for your teaching staff? Oh, we haven’t thought of that yet. How many students do you have? Oh, we already got a hundred kids signed up. Where are your facilities, have you worked out the facilities and the curriculum? Oh we’re not going to concentrate on that, we’re going to get the content to it, what we want is just having an experience; we just want to grow a sense of community and experience corporately. And so he said, tell me then, it seems like we’re on different frequencies, are you after quantity or quality? Oh, quantity, no question. And of course that’s the story.

Now in this psalm notice it’s not quantity, it’s quality. Psalm 29:1, “Give unto the LORD, O ye mighty, give unto the LORD glory and strength. [2] Give unto the LORD the glory due His essence;” the word “name” is the essence of God. And when praise is given let it be due His nature, and what praise can we possibly give a God of infinite perfect nature? We can only praise Him for His works, not ours. And therefore Psalm 29 continues the praise with God’s works. We praise God by being thankful for what He’s done in history. Verse 3, “The voice of the LORD is upon the waters. The God of glory thunders; the LORD is upon many waters.” See, there’s the power of God suppressing the waters. Verse 10, “The LORD sits upon the…” and there’s the technical word the mabbul, the word “flood” in verse 10 is the word that is only used for Noah’s cataclysm, “the LORD sits on the cataclysm.” You’ve heard the expression sit on it… here it is; God sits on it, He sits on the cataclysm, “The LORD sits King forever.” It’s a picture—He’s got it under control!

Turn to Psalm 74:17, this is a verse cited in the New Testament. “Thou hast set all the borders of the earth; thou hast made summer and winter.” That is a reference to the seasons established by the Noahic Covenant. By the way, remember verse 17 because you’re going to see it again here shortly.

Psalm 104:5, here again is a praise psalm; it starts off the way… and many Christians have memorized Psalm 104:1, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, O LORD my God, Thou art very great,” and so forth, it praises Him and then in verse 5 it begins the praise of the Noahic Covenant, “Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever. [6] Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. [7] At Thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of Thy thunder they hastened away. [8] They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which Thou has founded for them.” And now the Noahic Covenant, legal term, [9] “Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over, that they turn not again…” “…not again to cover the earth.” So even though Noah’s name isn’t mentioned the Noahic Covenant is implicit in the praise. Wherever, and this is a general rule you can follow in your Bible reading, wherever you have the biblical authors try to cope with chaos in nature you always have the Noahic Covenant sitting there in the background of the text… always.

Another passage, Proverbs 8; the importance of Proverbs 8 is that Proverbs 8 forms one of the Old Testament forerunners of John 1, the one that we say Jesus was the Word, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, [3] All things were created by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” That passage is developed from here, Proverbs 8, and in Proverbs 8:27-29 we have what may be a reference to the Noahic Covenant. “When He prepared the heavens, I was there; when He set a compass upon the face of the deep; [28] When He established the clouds above; when He strengthened the fountains of the deep,” or closed them. [29] “When He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment; when He appointed the foundations of the earth.” That may refer to creation; it may refer to the creation however also of the postdiluvian era.

Turn to Isaiah, continuing, watch how Isaiah develops the Noahic Covenant; Isaiah 54:9, “For this is as the waters of Noah unto me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be angry with you, nor rebuke thee. [10] “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My grace shall never depart from thee, [neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the LORD, who has mercy on thee.]” So God is contrasting the temporalness of creation and the eternal endurance of grace and He does so, hunting around through Isaiah’s mind, hunting around for some one illustration that will convey stability to the average people who read Isaiah’s prophecy. So of all the illustrations which one does Isaiah pick for this important point? The Noahic Covenant, just like Jesus picks the Noahic Covenant as the backdrop for the Second Advent of Christ.

Turn to Isaiah’s successor in the school of the prophets, Jeremiah 5:22; here where the physical aspects of the Noahic Covenant are now becoming blurred because now the prophets are developing a metaphorical use of the Noahic Covenant, for spiritual things. Here in Jeremiah 5:22 it says, “Fear ye not Me? saith the LORD. Will ye not tremble at My presence, who have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass; and though its waves thereof toss themselves, yet they cannot prevail; though they roar, yet they cannot pass over it?” First just a simple physical picture. Now I realize if you lived in Lubbock all your life you have problems understanding what an awesome thing it is to watch the ocean after a storm, maybe a storm of many, many hours, for over the sea it’s not the intensity of the wind that counts on an open stretch of water, it’s what is called fetch that counts, and fetch is the product of the wind speed and the duration of the wind over the water. So say a 20 mile an hour wind for five hours over open water is far more dangerous than a 40 mile an hour wind for five minutes because it has much more time for the energy that is involved in the air, the fluid of the air, to be conveyed by friction to the fluid of the water. It’s much more dangerous.

As an example of this the famous Galveston disaster in 1900, when thousands, I think it was 6,000 people in the city of Galveston were destroyed and what happened there, as many of you know the Galveston beach goes off very slowly and it’s a very dangerous beach in a storm, far more dangerous than a beach where the land drops off very rapidly because the water is shallow and when a wind blows over that shallow water the water hasn’t got enough space to develop what is called a recirculation devise. And so instead of going like this, the whole sheet of water gets coupled to the wind and just starts moving the sheet of water. Lake Okeechobee Florida was picked up in the hurricane in 1944 and transported halfway across the Florida peninsula… awesome power, and nothing stops the power of moving water. You can stand on a rocky beach after a storm and see millions and millions of tons of water coming, slamming against rocks, it’s an awesome thing to behold, the power and the roar of it. And that’s the picture of Jeremiah. He’s gone along the coast and there are places on the coast of Israel, Rosh Hanikra, up north in the border with Lebanon, you can down into the surf into a cave and the cave takes you out away from the surf and then you can get almost underneath there and you can hear the waves slam against the outside of the cave and it’s just a tremendous thing, you can’t hear yourself think inside the roar is so heavy. And this is a picture of Jeremiah in verse 22.

All right, that’s the physical side and he’s saying look, as hard and as powerful as these millions of tons of water, as they slam up against the rocks, as powerful as that is, they cannot pass over the Word of God. What he is saying is that you think the rock is strong—the Word of God is stronger! That water, as powerful as it is, cannot transgress the decree of God. But then Jeremiah goes on to draw out the metaphorical application; Jeremiah 6:23, “But this people has a revolting and a rebellious heart; and they are revolting and gone.” Now over and over again in the prophets what is the sea? When we had the Daniel series, what does the sea become a symbol of later in the Bible? A mob, a mob of doctrine-less humanity; mobs are extremely dangerous. Someone after the morning service, we were discussing at the back and he was saying, there are two very parallel experiences in life and if you’ve ever had them you can see how parallel they are. One experience is the experience of getting caught in an awful undertow when you’re swimming in the ocean, and the undertow just takes you and all that you’re doing, all you can, just to keep your head above water, never mind where you’re going, you let the undertow take you, and then when you get to where you’re going to go then you decide what to do from there. But no way can you swim against a powerful undertow; you just waste your strength and you can drown by wasting your strength prematurely and fighting the undertow. But he said I was also one time involved in a riot, I got swept into it and the only experience I ever had physically in my life that answered to that awful thing was swimming against the undertow, a crowd of people, not thinking, just as a living organism, a gigantic amoeba that just sweeps every individual before it, it’s the mob, the mob that’s gone wild.

And so that’s what Jeremiah says in verse 23, a mob, and he makes the connection. So God, therefore, not only by the Noahic Covenant, restrains chaos in nature; Jeremiah uses it as He restrains chaos in man. And from now until the end of the Noahic Covenant God has ways of restraining negative volition. He permits negative volition, He permits men to revolt but He only permits it to happen so far, and then boom, down comes temporal judgment. God has systems for handling this.

Let’s go to the New Testament and watch how the theme continues, Matthew 8:23. All these passages must be understood in the context of Noah’s Covenant. This many of you learned as children growing up in Sunday School, the story of Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. Let’s look at that again, and not dealing with it as an isolated incident story but as the continuation of a great theme. “And when he was entered into a ship, His disciples followed Him. [24] And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves; but…” and in the Greek it’s emphasized by the imperfect tense, “but Jesus kept on sleeping,” perfectly relaxed. [25] “And His disciples came to Him, and awoke Him, and said Lord, save us; we perish. [26] And He said unto them, Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith? Then He arose, and he rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm. [27] And the men marveled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”

A clear claim to deity; Matthew 8:23-27 have to be interpreted in the light of Psalm 29, Jeremiah 5 and the Noahic Covenant. It’s not an isolated story just to be read by itself. You’ve got to realize what Jesus is saying there; He is saying I am the God of the Noahic Covenant. After all, if I can issue a decree and stop all the oceans of the world from changing, if I can issue a decree and stop the continents from going up and down, what is the Sea of Galilee? Trivial, a little puddle, and I say stop and it stops. Now there you’ve got a picture, a picture that’s easy for you to walk away, close your Bibles, close your notes, walk away with a picture in your mind of God’s power, the power that stands behind the promises. And that’s what you want to do, cultivate these vivid mental pictures.

Two further passages in the New Testament, Acts 17. We said the Noahic Covenant applies to non-Christian as well as Christians; this is why on Mars’ Hill, when Paul teaches the Greeks and they say well Paul, we’ve never heard the gospel before, we don’t even have a New Testament. They could claim ignorance, just like some of you have heard the argument, well what about those who have never heard, do they go to hell? What about that person who’s never heard. The biblical answer is very clear, there aren’t any people that never heard. Oh, there are people obviously that never heard the New Testament, but there aren’t people that never heard the essence of God and this is why in Acts 17:26, a clear reference to the Noahic Covenant. “And He has made from one race all races of men,” or “one blood stock all races of men,” that’s the diversion of Noah’s sons across the face of the earth, and notice in connection with verse 26 with that diversification, “to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined the seasons,” literally, “before appointed, and the boundaries of the continents,” the places where man lives, his habitation. That is a citation of Psalm 74:17 that I pointed out earlier. So Paul simply picks up the Noahic Covenant and he comes out to Mr. Non-Christian, and he says look, this non-Christian sitting out here, unregenerate, on negative volition, but he doesn’t stand out completely apart from the Word of God, that man is surrounded by the Word of God. How? He’s surrounded because the Noahic Covenant controls nature all around him.

Now, let’s make a little further deduction. A while ago I said God controls the ocean, God controls the continents, God controls the earth, God controls extraterrestrial space around the earth, God controls the universe. Now let’s just make one very, very simple deduction one step further. If God controls all points in time and space, then corollary, He controls all circumstances in our lives and there is no such thing as uncontrolled chaos. Remember what 1 Corinthians 10:13 says? “There has no testing taken you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tested above that which you are able.” And when you get in a jam and you think the test is bigger than you can take, or you tend to be tempted by that satanic siren song that says God can’t control us, think back and refurbish your soul with these vivid pictures. Who was it that snapped His fingers on the Sea of Galilee and calmed things down? Yes, that was physical water and a physical storm but what it is in a flow of Biblical theology? It’s a picture of the chaos of life, the chaos of evil and God says stop it and there was a great calm. Who controls? It starts with the Noahic Covenant. And who controls the non-Christian? Who keeps the non-Christian, even, from destroying himself, which if left to himself he would destroy himself? God does.

One last reference in the New Testament to this theme of restraint. Turn to 2 Peter but don’t fasten too much on verses 5-6, we’ve looked at those many times in this Genesis series. Now we want to look at the verses that flow away from that classic passage; 2 Peter 3:8-9. In this passage we have why there’s this spiritual application of why God in the Noahic Covenant restrains chaos in nature and why He’s interested in interesting restraining chaos in man. Why? “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but He is patient toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” That’s the answer for the Noahic Covenant. God is not willing that any perish but that all come to repentance. And so even the non-Christian, ignorant though he is the Word of God’s affect in his life, even the non-Christian daily is in contact with the Word of God. He doesn’t know it, true; it will take a regenerate ambassador of Christ to point this out to him, true. But in fact the non-Christian daily is supported by the Word of God.

Let’s to back to the Noahic Covenant for one last feature. We said the legal term in theology is that He was restraining the watery cataclysm, and now in the last verses we can summarize them, Genesis 9:13-17, the verses that refer to the bow in the cloud. God says in verse 12, “And God said, This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for generations untold.” The word “perpetual” is too powerful, what he’s talking about is generations in sequence in mortal history. [13] “I do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth.” Notice, “between Me and the earth.” Verse 14, “And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be see in the cloud; [15] And I will remember my covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a mabbul,” or “a cataclysm to destroy all flesh. [16] The bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.”

Several things, notice that God gives us a tangible sign of His covenant, the rainbow. We are lucky here in the Lubbock area because probably one of the finest places to view cloud formations is in the high plains of west Texas, except when the dust is in the air. But we have some of the most beautiful displays of rainbows of any place in the country. And we are going into the season where this is true, the spring buildup that you will get around here. You watch these, take your children out, you Christian parents, you’ve got a perfect teaching… you don’t need a flannel graph, why bother with a flannel graph, you’ve got God’s flannel graph up in the sky. Take them out and show them the rainbow so they learn to connect the Scriptures, the pieces of paper, with the physical phenomena itself, so the God they’re worshiping is the God that there He just signed His name again. Tell them that, that’s exactly what He’s doing; God has signed His name again on the dotted line, He’s showing you his signature; little boy, little girl, I want you to look at, and then explain it, go over the story again that who has ultimate power. You’ve got a three dimensional technical illustration of the Noahic Covenant every time it showers right here in Lubbock. So you shouldn’t have any trouble, if you grew up in New York City or some of the large areas where the pollution is so heavy in the air you can’t even see the clouds, let alone the rainbow.

Now let’s look further at this rainbow. The rainbow, He said, “I set it in the clouds,” apparently before the flood there was no rain; we know this from Genesis 2 and here in Genesis 8 the seasons begin and in Genesis 9 the rainbow begins; all these are meteorologically interrelated. In Genesis 2 it says it did not rain but a mist went up from the face of the earth. The water droplets, it’s an interesting, meteorological fact, but in order to get a rainbow you can’t get it out of mist. Yes, you can get it off the nozzle of your hose but that’s because the nozzle of your hose is producing droplets big enough to fall. And here’s a most marvelous thing. If you do a study of the raindrops, as I have, and check the diameter of a raindrop, as you start, as the water begins to condense into a fine mist the raindrop diameter isn’t large enough to get a drop that will fall through the air; it can be actually held aloft just through the action, turbulence, in the air currents. This would be a fog, or even a drizzle. And if you shine light through a fog or a drizzle you won’t get a rainbow; what you get is a white kind of glow and distortion but you won’t get a rainbow. The peculiar thing is the rainbow phenomena optically begins when raindrops exceed a certain radius and that radius also corresponds to the radius of a water drop that’s needed to drop in the earth’s field of gravity.

So here is a marvelous thing; the rainbow only forms in drops large enough to fall, and so therefore it is called the rainbow, not the water bow, not the fog bow, not the mist bow, but the rainbow, and it’s no accident. Those two physically apparently unrelated events, because I remind you the size of the drop in the field of the acceleration of gravity on this planet, that’s a separate function altogether from the laws of optics that control the diffraction of light in the water itself. So we have those two things brought together in the rainbow and this is what God is doing here and this is another evidence why there was no rain before the flood. So it was a new thing. It must have been awe inspiring for think of it, Noah and his family, as they got up out of the top of the ark and they looked out they were the first human beings that had ever seen a rainbow.

Now here is a marvelous thing again. The rainbow is going to take a connotation which I’m about to show you in the Scriptures, but before I show you the connotation the rainbow has in doctrine and theology I want to back up a minute and remind you of something I said back at the end of Genesis 8, when I said that when Noah built an altar, I said that was the first time the word “altar” occurred in the Bible, and what did I say the significance of the building of the altar was? When Noah walked and out he built the earth’s first altar it was an admission that Eden had been destroyed and that the presence of God was removed from where to where? The presence of God was removed from the surface of the earth as it existed apparently in some way through the cherubs in the antediluvian world; this presence on earth is now removed where? Upstairs, in heaven. And from that point on the altar was formed because on the altar there would be the hallal or the burning sacrifices and the smoke would go up into the heavens and it would direct men’s attention to where that smoke went up into heaven; it was a physical concrete way of forcing people to look up. In fact, the public meetings of the early Christians, their stance for prayer was their open hands up to the throne of God.

Now this emphasis now on God in heaven, where does Noah and his family look when they walk out? They look up and where is the rainbow? Up! So you get the idea that the rainbow and the throne of God are somehow connected. And sure enough; turn to Ezekiel 1. I’m going to show you two Theophanies; a theophany, a vocabulary word, theophany is a God-appearance; it comes from the Geek verb to see, to behold—Theos, God, the appearance of God. And so when God physically appears we call that a “theophany.” One of the great theophanies of the Bible is Ezekiel 1, the flying saucer one, you know, everybody that thinks that God shows up in a flying saucer usually picks a few details of Ezekiel 1. But today we want to look at just one verse, Ezekiel 1:28, here is a theophany; Ezekiel looks straight at God and “As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about” God’s throne.

Now the rainbow is associated with the throne of God. There are several factors here to appreciate verse 28; because we are observers on the surface of the earth, and probably a few of you fly so you don’t see this but most of us on the surface of the earth we never get a chance to see a rainbow fully. And probably you’ve always thought that the rainbow is half a circle; it isn’t, the rainbow is a circle, it’s just that from the surface of the earth the observer can never see the other half of the circle, but if you go up in the air you can see it and under certain theoretical conditions at least you can see the complete circle. So the kind of bow that Ezekiel sees is not the kind that I’ve seen Christian artists to try to draw it; the bow is just like this. What he sees is he sees the appearance of God and some sort of throne and surrounding the throne is this glimmering awe-inspiring bow.

Now the second thing to notice about verse 28; when in history did this theophany occur. What was God getting at at this point? Well we know Ezekiel is an exilic author; Ezekiel is giving us warning about what’s going to happen in 586 BC with judgment on the nation Israel. So the picture of God’s throne is a picture of imminent judgment, He’s about ready to clobber the nation. But, He’s not going to permanently clobber the nation because in 70 years, by 516 BC that nation would be brought back into the land so it is a graciously restrained judgment. So therefore what’s the sign of a God who graciously restrains His judgment? The rainbow! That’s the theological connotation of the bow.

Let’s back this up with one more theophany in the Bible; Revelation 4. In Revelation 4:3 we find a theophany, like the same theophany in Ezekiel this theophany occurs when judgment is imminent, in this case judgment just before the return of Christ. Judgment is about to steal forth on the face of the earth; the scrolls of judgment are about to be unrolled and broken and so the theophany occurs, and in verse 3 as John looks, he says, “He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardius stone; and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” Know what that is saying? If you and I want a mental picture of the glory of God go out and look at the rainbow because when the men look at the theophany of God that’s what they see. The way they describe it to our eyes if you want to see what it’s like people, look at a rainbow, the closest thing in our every day experience to what the glory of God looks like.

So the Noahic Covenant is the grounds and the base for all life on the earth. As we continue our study in the book of Genesis we’ll go on to see the various implications of the Noahic Covenant.