The Days of Noah: After the Flood, a Changed World

Genesis 8:14-22

On the 20th of July in 1969 the Eagle lunar landing module touched down upon the moon.  The spacecraft landed on th Sea of Tranquility.  Neil Armstrong stepped out and said "that is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.  This environment was strange to him, never before were any humans there.  There was just an eerie silence.

When Noah stepped out of the ark, after a year of judgment upon this earth, it was a different earth than what he had known before.  Once it had teemed with wildlife and people, once it had been abundantly rich with trees and vegetation.  But now it was an hostile environment.  Deeper oceans, higher mountains, harsher climate, cooler and stronger winds.  High on the sides of Mt. Ararat, Noah and his family surveyed their new home, but God spoke to Noah.  He and his family were not alone. God said to go forth, spread out, you and the animals replenish the earth.  Noah disembarked and the first thing he did was:

A sacrifice.  The first thing that Noah did was to build an altar, a place where man can meet God on God's terms of course.  Noah's first purpose was to renew fellowship with God.  Noah is giving visible evidence that he is putting God first.  Isn't it always a question of priorities?  Do we put God first?   The Lord Jesus said you are to love the LORD your God with all your mind, with all your strength, your heart, your soul, and your neighbour as yourself.  Put God first.  God is the Number 1 priority in our life or should be.  Noah put God's altar first because that was important to him.  But it also showed his gratitude to God.  God by grace had saved him.

Noah had a God-centered life.  He really trusted in God.  The secret of a good home lies in putting the Lord first.  God must come first before anybody else.  Is the place where you meet God most important?  We also notice that Noah offered a burnt sacrifice on the altar.  It wasn't an altar for show, it was for real worship not for formality.  It was for real worship.  Noah offered burnt offerings of the clean animals.  7 of every kind of clean animal came on board the ark.  This is the first reference in scripture where we read of the building of an altar, and also the first sacrifice.  The animal was totally consumed.  It was an offering for sin.  Noah not only knew the difference between clean and unclean, but he knew that the fellowship between  holy God and sinful man was only possible  through a propitiating sacrifice.  Blood had to be shed for sinful humans to have fellowship with a holy God.  Abel knew this, so did Noah.  God's law has always existed from the beginning in the hearts of the people of God.    The only way for us to have fellowhip with God is through sacrifice.  All of the old testament sacrifice pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the only sacrifice that God requires. 



When we come to God, we come in Jesus name, we pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ because fellowship with God must come through his sacrifice.  Sin must be dealt with and Christ has dealt with it for the believer.  When we come to God we come through the merits of his sacrifice.  Hebrews 10:9-12  "Then said  he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.  By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.  And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God" Noah's sacrifice pleased God and then God made a covenant. Gen 8:21-22 "And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from is youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.  While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."  Genesis 9:8-11 "And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,  And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you.  And with every living creature that is with you...And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." A covenant is a solemn promise and God made it.  It did not depend upon human beings.  He made it with Noah and his descendants and with all creatures that came out of the ark.  The purpose of the covenant was that God would not again destroy the world by a flood.  The sign of the covenant was a rainbow, a visible sign. 
How long would this last?  For perpetual generations.  "while the earth remaineth" as long as the earth lasts.  God's comforting grace is seen in the rainbow.  In the light of recent events, the terror of it all, imagine Noah and his sons' apprehension when in this new world they see clouds gathering.  God made a rainbow which appears in the vicinity of rain only, reassuring man there will not be a  world-wide flood.  

There were changes:  Chp 9:2,3-7 "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.  But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.  And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.  Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. " There are changes in the animals V2 they will now fear humans.  There is a change in diet V3-4  God says that from now on humans are allowed to eat meat.  Before it was just plants and seeds, but now meat is added because life would be harder.  But God withholds the blood because the blood is the life V4  Blood is forbidden as a diet all the way through scripture both the old and new testaments.   Why is it forbidden?  It is nothing to do with diseases, God tells us its because the blood is the life and the life belongs to God.  Always the life is Gods.  Acts 15:20,29 "But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.  That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well.  Fare thee well."  There is a difference in the law. Gen 9:5,6  At the hand of every beast and every man who kills a man, God will require that animal or that human's blood.  This is the scripture institution of the death penalty for murder.  Here is the beginning of human government.     Why is it so serious to kill a human being?  Gen 9:6  In the image of God made he man.  Man is not an animal, they are made in God's image.  And for one person to murder another person is an insult to God, and God requires the blood of the murderer.  God never changes.  For human authorities to execute for murder is retribution.

But some men say, "O but God forgives:"  How, how does he forgive everybody?  Does he forgive without retribution?  Never.  That is why Jesus had to die, because God never forgives without retribution.  God only forgives upon repentance and atonement through faith in Jesus Christ.  God never forgives indescriminantly.  God always demands justice, a sentence upon sin.
Do you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ?  Noah built an altar and he sacrificed, Noah did that because he knew that sacrifice was the only way for a sinner to approach God, and believers approach God in precisely the same way through the sacrifice of our sin-bearer, the Lord Jesus Christ.  A Christian can come to God because Jesus makes them right,  but someone who is lost, they think they can make themselves right through being good, but no one can be perfect through works.  

The only way of salvation is through Jesus Christ, your sacrifice and you must trust him  Grace alone.  Why don't you trust in God's grace alone through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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The above are notes made by myself from the sermon by Paul Dowling of Whiteabbey Congregational (Reformed) at Sermon Audio

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=13008145149