Genesis 8 & 9

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Genesis 8:1-22

“And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; 2 the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; 3 and the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. 4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. 6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: 7 and he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. 8 Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; 9 but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. 10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; 11 and the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. 12 And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more. 13 And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry. 14 And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried. 15 And God spake unto Noah saying, 16 Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee. 17 Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. 18 And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him: 19 every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark. 20 And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 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 his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. 22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

Introduction

[Audio version: https://resources.ccphilly.org/detail.asp?TopicID=&Teaching=WED522]

“Chapter 8, we get to tease a little bit with people listening to tapes here or on CDs, internet tonight, because we’ll look at a couple pictures, they’ll hear us talking about but won’t know what’s going on. But we love you. Chapter 8 begins “And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; 2 the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; 3 and the waters returned from off the earth continually:” going on, day after day, “and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. 4 And the ark rested” interesting, Noah’s name means “rest,” “in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains” plural “of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.” (verses 1-4) You go through the numbers here, very well chronicled as you go through chapter 7, 8 and you can get the length of time on the Ark and so forth. So “on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.” So we believe, I believe that the Ark is on Mount Ararat, which is the tallest of the mountains of Ararat, because it says it came to rest, and 73 days later as the water continued to recede, the tops of the other mountains are visible, which means it was on the greatest height. So the question is, where is it? Now you guys can follow Bob Cori Niki, he’s done some great stuff with Mount Sinai being in Arabia, and he just sites the fact that Paul says that in Galatians, that Mount Sinai’s in Arabia, not on the Sinai Peninsula. Of course if you read the book The Gold of Exodus, you follow some of that stuff, it’s very, very interesting. And that he's gone after the anchors of Paul now and so forth. But now he’s looking in Iran for Noah’s Ark, and I saw some pictures, you see some of these outlines of this structure, a big long box that doesn’t at all look dimensionally like it’s described in here, and it’s kind of on an angle down in a crevasse like, it looks like it didn’t came to rest. I like this word “rested” because it seems to me that it would settle down, and everybody got out, they didn’t slide out the side. So I don’t know about that, because traditionally, back to the Greeks, ancient history, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, there were Egyptians that were on Mount Ararat, Josephus writes about the Ark being on Mount Ararat, Marco Polo visited the Saint Jacob’s Monastery where they showed him things that had been taken out of the Ark on Ararat, and just, it has traditionally always been on that particular mountain in Turkey. So, questions about where in the world is it today and so forth, we’ve got a few pictures to throw up, you can do what you want with them. Someone here a number of years ago go for me, procured for me, 8 photographs of something, taken, they were declassified, they were taken in 1949, the June 17^th pictures from 1949, and now through the Freedom of Information Act, they’re telling you, you can go look at latitude and longitude, you can look at the 1949 pictures, and we can start throwing any of this stuff up, and whatever ones are up there, I’ll just talk about which one’s they are. Now that’s a sketch, that’s the traditional impression where someone claimed to see it, there was a guy, Narvaru who claimed to be up there, went up there twice, CBS, one of the networks finally had to recant because the guy finally admitted he wasn’t there and took the wood from his back yard, just a crazy story. But people who have been up describe it as barge-like and they describe it with square ends like that, and those sightings, this particular structure has been seen at the top of the Ahora Gora Gorge, which is kind of on the southwestern side of Mount Ararat, and supposedly part of it is broken off now, and there are, you hear people claim to have seen it, been there. And you know, it seems fairly reputable, but you wish somebody would be in there with a movie camera so you could show it. That’s a traditional sketch of what some believe this structure is like (see and log onto: https://www.noahsark.it/eyewitnesses.htm for some stunning evidence and eyewitness accounts). What have you next here, Matt? OK, you all know what this is, this a mile and a half from the top of the Ahora Gora Gorge on the other side there, this is a plateau on the northwest corner of Ararat, where the government has identified what they won’t talk much about, but they call the Ararat anomoly.

If you go online you can find the Ararat anomaly (above) and there’s a man who has fought through the Freedom of Information Act, he was a satellite photo analyst and information analyst, and he got them to release these photos. Now I talked to him on the phone today, I found him this afternoon, and he teaches at the University now, he was kind of running, and I said “I have the ’49 photos,” and he said “Oh ya, I have the ’49 photos, that’s 2, 4, 5, and 6,’ those four photos,” I said, “No, I have 8 photos,” and then we were friends, so [loud laughter], and we started talking for a long time, and he said ‘All the other numbers on my photos are blotted out,” and he said “Well you know they took over 70 photos on the 17^th and the 18^th,” I said “No, I didn’t know that.” So we are corresponding now, I’m sending copies of the pictures he doesn’t have, and he’s sending me reports. So I’m hoping by the time I’m through Genesis I have some really interesting things to show you. What’s next? See what we have here. Ya, that’s hard to tell, that’s one of the ’49 photos, you see that dark thing sticking out, you can’t tell anything from that, that could be anything, that could be a snowcone from down the street. These are not satellite, these are taken from a reconnaissance plane…again, you can’t tell what that is, it’s Big Foot. Now this is from an Ikonos class satellite, this is much more recent, I think this is 2001, 2002, and on the longitude and latitude marks on this photo, it’s the same as the ’49 photos that I have, only the glacier’s died back far enough where you can actually square shoot there on this photograph, this is again, the is only towards the northwest plateau. So again, you scratch your head, you look at that and think, ‘OK, let’s get a nice warm summer and get the Captain’s log or something.’ OK, that picture there, I get my government laser here, ok, see this structure there, notice that structure going straight off the cliff there, there’s the “anomaly,” we’re going to have much better pictures of that, that anomaly, it’s hard to tell there because it's all covered with ice, you can’t really tell what it is, it’s covered with ice and snow…can we go to the next photo?...Here’s that same structure when the snow is melted back, but it is covered with, the top is covered with ice, this is the picture that he had, that the government released in 2003. Now here’s the interesting thing about this one, he’s sold on this one, I talked to him today, most descriptions have been of a barge, now he said, now look, in the description in Genesis it only gives the length, the width and the height, and we know it’s a 6-to-1 ratio. He said, besides that it doesn’t tell us exactly the shape. He said “I was telling people in the intelligence community about this anomaly, and he said, you can never get good shots of Ararat because there’s always cloud cover, particularly if it’s warmer, and he said we were standing there in the big control room, like you see when the Space Shuttle goes up, and all of a sudden the clouds clear, and this came in, and an old lady stood up and said ‘Oh my God beep! was right!’ and he said “That woman is a believer today, and he said, this structure,” let me see what we get there, ok, there’s a close-up, it’s another shot of it, this whole side of it is still under ice. You can see this rounded side exposed, it’s at 15,500 foot on the mountain by the way. And they can see by these ridges here that there’s probably something to the structure under the ice, there’s a ridge there, there’s one here, there’s a variation of the shape, this whole side again is still ice, this is all covered, that’s all ice on top, can’t tell what that is. He told me, three of his friends in the Agency, people never say names or what Agency, and I don’t want anybody coming around my house, so, he said “I have three friends in the Agency that KH-9, KH-11 satellites have photos, whose resolution is 2-foot per pixel, he said they have resolution where they can see the grain on the deck of this thing, and he said I have three friends, they don’t want to release them because they don’t want other countries to see how good our resolution is, but he said I have three friends in the communities that told me, we have one problem, and that is, we have a huge ship, 15,500 foot on top of Mount Ararat,” and they’ve seen it without the ice. So he said there are people who, so he’s convinced of this. Now here’s the interesting thing about this structure here, that structure is over a thousand foot long. He said I know the description of the cubits given in Genesis, he said, it’s 300 cubits by 50 cubits wide, he said it's a 6-to-1 ratio, and he said we think in terms of 18-inch cubits. Now this is a scientist on the phone with me. But he said “Don’t forget,” he said, “in that day, the giants were the ruling class, ruling the government, and the cubit from their fingertip to their elbow may have been four-foot, three to four foot, so he said a cubit when Noah wrote that may be much different from the Greek, Roman or Egyptian cubit, which is 24 inches, later,” he said, “The remarkable thing about this structure is, the pictures they have of it, with the ice melted off, it is exactly a 6-to-1 ratio, exactly.” So he’s very excited about this, he’s my buddy now, so, as I get more stuff I’ll let you know, but this is from the upper mile and a half from the top of the Ahora Gora Gorge, this structure that they just call the Ararat Anomaly sits. Maybe next year. That’s it, we don’t have any of the old photo’s from ’49? We used to have those. Last time we did this you had the ’49 photos. You don’t have them, we’ll do them next time, before Genesis is over. You have to keep coming back, because one of these Wednesday nights, the declassified black and white 1949 photos are going to be up there. In fact I just gave them to somebody because he wants copies of before that he doesn’t have, so, they’re very interesting. So anyhow, everyone listening to this is going out of their minds. You guys listening, you should see what we were looking at here [loud laughter], you should see the ship, you can see the anchor, you can see the portholes, the door that God shut, man oh man… OK, so a little bit of fun there. He’s actually sending an article to me written in 1637 by an explorer who got up to that side, to the plateau on the northwest side, and describes this structure exactly, the same length, the same width, everything about it in the exact same place that we have it today, with the Ikonos-class and some of the other satellites. We could make a lot of money in Turkey making tours of this, you know, it’s just, it was controlled for years by the Communists, an Ark up on the side of a mountain is not good for them if they don’t believe in God, and now it’s under Muslim control, and the Koran says it’s on a different mountain, so it’s not good for them if it’s there either, but it’s there, because it says it right here, rested in the seventh month on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat, so we know where it’s at. Just can’t wait to get better photos, and I’ll see what I can dig up by the time this is over, and we’ll drive everybody listening to the tapes crazy one more time.

The Flood Waters Dry Up, Noah & Family Disembark, God Makes A Covenant Between Him & Mankind

OK, so after 73 more days the tops of the other mountains are seen, verse 5, “And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:” (verse 6) and what he did is opened the window and said, took a deep breath and said, ‘PRAISE THE LORD,’ being on that boat for over 200 days with all those animals, he couldn’t wait to open the window, I guarantee you that. “and he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.” (verse 8) an unclean bird, Levitically. The raven did not return, a raven is unclean because it eats carrion, it eats carcasses. So this raven went forth, and anywhere it found a carcass of an animal or a man, it was completely comfortable to land on that and feed off the flesh of whatever carcasses there were at this time. [I’m just speculating, but I’m guessing after the initial flooding of the earth, all the animals and humans that drowned, many, but not all, became a feast for all the sharks, giant squids, and the lobsters and craps waiting at the bottom.] The raven did not return. “Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.” (verses 8-9) “And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;” (verse 10) Now the dove would never land on the carcass of an animal or eat anything unclean, they were accepted, in Leviticus you could sacrifice a dove if you were poor, they were considered clean [and you could also eat them]. “and the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.” (verse 11) she’s somewhere rested in an olive tree, and God sovereignly had that animal pick off a leaf and bring it back with her. You’re saying ‘How could there be olive trees?’ Olive trees have actually been known to grow leaves underwater, in flooded areas. Olive trees are very robust, and can live for quite a long time, so no problem an olive tree surviving. Ah, a sign of peace, national, around the world today, a dove with an olive branch in her mouth is where it comes from, peace, rest, a new beginning, hope, this dove returns with an olive branch in her mouth. “And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.” (verse 12) so now he knows she’s found a place to rest outside of the Ark. But isn’t it interesting, Noah is not making a move to leave the Ark until God says it’s time to leave the Ark. This is very specific, “And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.” (verse 13) everybody’s happy now. “And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.” (verse 14) Now, this is 377 days from when Noah first went on the Ark, if you go through all of the numbers from starting back in chapter 7 and you put them all together, this is a year, a 360 day year, that’s what we had in Genesis, this is a year and 11 days, [somehow that math doesn’t work out, because 360 + 11 = 371, so it must be a 365 day year, because 365 + 12 = 377, so it must be a year and twelve days for his math to be right] from when they first went into the Ark, the rain started seven days later, you follow the whole process, they were in that boat [ship] for 377 days. And now as he looks out, the ground is dry, Noah doesn’t leave. Verse 15 says “And God spake unto Noah saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee.” (verses 15-16) Now what in the world was that like? Imagine what that day was like, going forth from the Ark. It’s a complete new world, they stepped into a new world, cleansed, none of the violence, none of the description of things that we heard about back in chapter 6 and 7, the earth is cleansed. He’s like Adam and Eve when they were driven out of the Garden, they were the only human beings alive on earth. They didn’t have to lock their doors, they didn’t have to worry, if they heard a noise, again they didn’t have to say ‘Did you hear that, what do you think that was!?’ it had to be Shem, Ham or Japheth, there wasn’t anybody else. What was it like as they went out? the climate has changed, when we come down to verse 22, if you look there, God says “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” “seed time” now that’s the first time in the Bible the word “seed time” is used, “and harvest,” that’s the first time in the Bible harvest is used, and “cold,” that’s the first time in the Bible the word “cold” is used, and “heat” that’s the first time in the Bible the word “heat” is used, “and summer,” first time in the Bible the word “summer” is used, “winter,” first time in the Bible the word “winter” is used. The point that God’s making here is, the earth that was enveloped in a vapour canopy, where the climate was stable all around the world, has changed, now we read there’s wind, he made the wind to pass over the earth, now there’s cold, there’s summer, there’s winter, which means there’s a planting time and a harvest time, there’s a complete change in the elements, these guys step off the Ark and what was that like, they could sense that. What was it like when they heard thunder? They must have all run, ‘Shall we get back on!?’ what did they do when they heard thunder, what did they do when it started to rain? They probably got real quiet and looked at each other, and said ‘This is really weird, isn’t it?’ [This may be true, or it may be an over-interpretation of Scripture, we don’t know, and we won’t know till we get to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb spoken of in Revelation 19:7-9.] I mean, just imagine their experience, imagine their experience, desolate, people-less, there’s nobody as far as you could see anywhere in the earth, there were probably still earthquakes, the place was probably still unstable to a point, carcasses in different places, what a world they stepped off the Ark and entered into. A strange world this must have been. “Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.” (verses 16-17) Now we’re hearing some very familiar language, some of these phrases are almost exactly what God told Adam and Eve in the beginning, when they were to fill the earth and multiply. Now Noah’s being told very much the same thing. “And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him: every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark. And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” (verses 18-20) remember we had seven pairs of every clean beast. Now it’s the first time we have the word “altar” in the Bible. No doubt the idea of sacrifice on an altar is insinuated, because there at the east of Eden it seems that Adam was taught to sacrifice, Abel offered sacrifices, but the first time we have the word “altar” is here. And imagine what this day must have been like, he’s with his wife, he’s 601 years old, he’s with his sons and their wives. And I’m assuming they’re all believers [chuckles], ‘How do you know there’s a God, how do you know the Ark is real?’ there’s none of that nonsense, ok. And true worship is restored to the earth again, no more giants, no more idolatry, no more nonsense, no more line of Cain, none of the things that have polluted the earth, you know, here are these eight souls, offering sacrifices on their knees before the LORD, worshipping, what a new era, what a new day, very interesting scene. The earth is cleansed, again, unlike chapter 6, verses 4, verses 5, 11 through 13, filled with violence and so forth, no giants, that’s changed at this point in time. And it’s interesting again, every clean beast, this is before the Law is given, so there’s something that Noah understands before it’s codified. “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 his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.” (verse 21) and “as I have done” there’s a condition there, he won’t do it the way he did it before, the next time it happens it’s with fire, there may be floods, there may be tsunamis, but he will never destroy the population of the earth, never cleanse the globe again with a flood. He says it right here. He smelled a savour, a sweet savour, interesting, the Hebrew phrase is “it’s a savour of rest.” What is that all about? God smells? He gave us the capacity to smell. So I’m sure he doesn’t smell the way you and I smell, but there’s a savour to this that says in his heart, God has a heart, it says it right here, and it’s a savour of rest. Because those burnt offerings were a picture of the One who would come and crush the head of the serpent. The line was still alive, Satan had not eradicated it, Christ was still in the loins of Shem and his family, the Messiah would still come. And as this smoke ascends and comes into heaven, before God, it’s a savour, it’s a smell, an aroma of rest to Almighty God, because he’s reminded as it were, the blood atonement, the issue of man, though his heart is filled with evil imaginations, there is atonement, there is redemption. So he says ‘I will never destroy all of the earth again, as I have done,’ the covenant, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” (verse 22) So is the earth through this process left on it’s 23 1/3 axis, has that come after the flood? Is that certainly relative to the way the world is now? and necessary, if our axis was different, life would be vastly different. So, set up now to continue, for life to go forward.

Genesis 9:1-29

God Puts The Fear Of Man Into The Animals & The Fear Of God Into Man

“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. 2 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.” (verses 1-2) Now he’s given dominion, we’re going to see, in a different way that Adam was given dominion, with the beasts now there’s going to be a fear. I don’t know what that’s all about. Maybe that’s not relative to domestic livestock, maybe it’s relative to wild beasts of the earth, and certainly that’s true even tonight. So he says ‘There will be the dread of you upon every beast of the earth, fowl of the air, upon everything that moves on the earth, and upon the fishes of the sea, into your hand they’re delivered.’ “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat [food] for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” (verse 3) Now that would make everything afraid. “Every moving thing that liveth” no dietary laws, this is before Leviticus, you could eat shrimp and lobster I guess [I think we have seen elements of God’s Law already in practice, and especially where Noah was told to bring of every clean animal in pairs of sevens, so there was already a distinction between clean and unclean food and what could be offered as a sacrifice, so I would tend to disagree with Pastor Joe here.], not that we’d want to eat every moving thing, I understand. ‘but every living thing that moveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things.’ So, for you vegans out there, or you veggieheads, here’s God saying it’s ok to eat steak, and I’m glad [Pastor Joe, like me, is a meat-o-saurus]. I don’t want to offend anybody but I’m a carnivore, I’d much rather chew on a piece of meat than a piece of broccoli, I mean, I say grace, and it all needs to be sanctified anyway. It’s a funny thing, it’s easier for me to say grace over a piece of steak than a piece of broccoli, I’d be sincere. I was a vegetarian for a couple years…so we were vegetarians for a couple years…we had sacks of grain, sacks of soil, 5 gallons of soy oil, we were out of our minds [during Pastor Joe’s Hippie days], we were out on the Astro-plains with people we shouldn’t have been out there with, and trying to go through our seven Shakra, we were out of our minds, swallowing rags, cleaning out our stomachs, have them slide up again, if you don’t believe me, ask him, I’m not making it up. And then we got saved, it was wonderful, because, I remember when we got saved, the next day the birds were singing, the sky was blue, the trees had leaves on them, all that had been there, it was not like I ever saw it or ever experienced it. But the other thing that dawned on me, was I could say grace and eat anything now. And I then had a couple hot dogs and a big ham sandwich after not eating meat for a number of years. It didn’t even bother me, people were telling me ‘You’re gonna get sick,’ ah, there’s somebody without faith. I just said grace, I was so happy to eat a hot dog, I just shoveled it all down, I was fine. [laughter] In fact, that was one of the changes my mother noticed in my life, but she thought, ‘What’s after this, UFO’s? I mean, these guys have completely lost their minds now,’ and she said ‘I did notice you started eating meat again,’ you notice moms notice those kind of things. But I like meat, some people are vegetarians, to save the earth, because it takes less acreage to raise grain than it does to raise cows. Some people are vegetarians because they love animals, some people are vegetarians because they hate vegetables, they just want to destroy all the vegetables in the world. You can be a vegetarian for all kinds of reasons, but God gives permission here. Every living thing, Yes! Frank says ‘If you love me, feed me sheep,’ “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” (verse 3) So in the animal kingdom, he puts the fear of man in the animals. But he puts this stipulation on, “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” (verse 4) because the blood needed to be drained before the meat could be eaten, and that was all the way through the dietary laws. “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.” (verse 5) Now he’s going to do something interesting here, he’s putting the fear of man into the life of the beast, but he puts the fear of God into the life of man. Because he says anybody who sheds man’s blood, first of all if it’s an animal, when we come to the Law if you have an ox and it gores somebody, kills him, the beast is put to death, he says ‘I’m going to require that at the hand of the beast, and at the hand of man,’ verse 6 says, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” So God introduces capital punishment here. He puts into the animal the fear of man, and he puts into the heart of man the fear of God. Romans chapter 13 tells us ‘The magistrate does not bear the sword in vain, but is the minister of God to minister vengeance on those who do evil,’ that capital punishment is something that God endorses in the Scripture. It’s not a political thing, I’m just telling you what the Bible says. In the Bible, as we study further along we’re going to find out there’s premeditated manslaughter, there’s involuntary manslaughter, God really breaks it down. And if someone is killed accidentally, an ax head flies off and kills someone, that person could flee to one of the cities of refuge, where the whole case is examined. If they found out it was involuntarily done, that person didn’t mean to kill someone, he then was allowed to live in the city of refuge and find refuge there, and the avenger of blood from the other person’s family, there were no police forces then, it was the other person’s family that was allowed to execute vengeance, they were not allowed to go in and execute vengeance on that individual. And then it says, when the death of the high priest took place, whoever was high priest then, when that high priest died, then that person was allowed to leave the city of refuge and no one could touch him after that. That of course is a beautiful picture of Jesus Christ, our High Priest that has died for us, and through his death, we’ve been exonerated and found innocent. A beautiful picture there. The Bible will go into great detail about that. And the Law said “Thou shalt not kill,” the Hebrew is “Thou shalt do no murder,” it’s talking about premeditated manslaughter. Because God will send Abraham and his 327 armed servants to pursue Chedorlaomer and the five kings of the north, and there’s a great slaughter. God will send Joshua and his armies to clear out the Land of Canaan, God will send David against the Philistines, there will be wars through the Bible that are God ordained, and if it was not for those wars, the nation of Israel, and the tribe of Judah would never have survived, and the Messiah never would have come, there never would have been Salvation for the world. So God certainly gives power to governments, to exercise the sword. [And just in case you may be wondering ‘Well, God’s not fair, all these people in the world dying, some at the hands of God’s people under orders from God himself, they never received the opportunity for Salvation.’ Well, very few human beings have ever received the opportunity for Salvation and eternal life in the Old Testament anyway, and very few have responded to God’s call to salvation from the time of Christ to now. So do all the “unsaved dead” go into some kind of every-burning hell, as some Christian religious groups and the Catholic church teach? Even though the doctrine about hell is a secondary doctrine, it is quite often attached to the primary doctrine about Salvation through Jesus Christ. There are many interpretations of Bible verses dealing with “the unsaved dead,” and there is one I like, because it shows God, if at all possible, wants all to be saved and come to salvation, as it states in 2^nd Peter 3:9. See https://unityinchrist.com/Does/TheMatrix.htm and Fall Holy Days https://unityinchrist.com/E-Mails/June%2014/FallHolyDays-short.htm for a very interesting Biblical interpretation about the “unsaved dead” and their future.] But because we’re fallen, there’s abuse there. There’s the right thing, and certainly there’s abuse too. That’s why we should pray for our leaders, the Bible says pray for our government, that they would have wisdom and that we would be able live peaceable and godly lives and be able to share the Good News of Christ in the culture that we live in. But God here, puts the fear of man into the beasts, and the fear of God into man. The problem is, what happens to a culture when there is no more fear of God? Well go home and turn on the news and you’ll see. Turn on the media and the entertainment industry and you’ll see what happens when there’s no more fear of God. And, we need to pray, we need to pray for our nation, pray for a revival, pray that God would be gracious and so forth [to learn about the massive revival that took place in the late 1960s through the 1970s, see The JESUS Revolution, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vmHFvnjPDw and see https://unityinchrist.com/prophets/Zephaniah/REVIVAL.html]. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” (verse 6) Life is sacred, you’d never know that by some of our statistics. “And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. 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, 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. 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.” (verse 7-11) Now this is a monogistic covenant, dependent upon one, this is God saying ‘I establish, I will do, it’s my covenant, it’s gonna stand.’ Here he says it again, “my covenant,” he’s going to say it three times, then again in verse 15. Remember this was a global flood. “And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: 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 flood to destroy all flesh. And 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.” (verses 12-16) Now you and I like to see a rainbow, rainbows are beautiful things, every once in awhile you see a double rainbow, ‘Isn’t that nice, isn’t that pretty.’ And it is. But I think Noah and his family they felt much different about rainbows than we do. Because God says, ‘while you’re looking up at it, I will be looking down at it, and remembering it’s a token.’ Now I get the idea that Noah knew what a rainbow was. Before the Flood, if the earth was enshrouded in a vapour canopy [which we don’t really know if it was], rainbows may have been part of the everyday sky. But God says to him ‘I want you to understand this, when there’s thunder, when it starts to rain, Noah, when you’re threatened and terrified, you look up, you’ll see my bow in the cloud, you remember my covenant that I have made, I will never do this again.’ And it must have been a wonderful thing for Noah and his family, to look up and see a rainbow. It must have meant way more to them than it does to us. Of course, when you and I see a rainbow, we say that’s just the spectrum of light when it divides in water droplets. Beside thinking all those wonderful things, and I appreciate science, it’s a wonderful thing to look up and say “Thank you, Lord, while I’m looking up at this you’re looking down at it, and what a wonderful thing after these thousands and thousands of years you’re still so faithful.” Great reminder. “And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.” (verse 17)

Noah Plants A Vineyard, Noah Gets Drunk

“And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.” (verse 18) now it’s telling us that for a particular reason, and it’s going to tell us that three times, “These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.” (verse 19) Next week when we come to the 10^th chapter, we’re going to find that Dr. William F. Albright, the world’s leading anthropologist says “This is the most accurate ancient table of nations in existence, that there’s nothing that compares to it.” So we’ll take some time and look at that next week, and he says “These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread. And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:” and he knew what evidently vineyards were before the Flood, “and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.” first mention of wine in the Bible, drunkenness and nakedness seem to go together in the Bible, “And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.” (verses 19-22) Now, this is the only failure we have in the life of Noah. He’s going to live 350 some years after this, so he lives to be 900 and some years, and I wish like you do, that in 900 years I would only mess up one time. I mean Abraham’s going to lie twice about who Sarah is, Jacob’s going to do all kinds of things wrong, Moses is going to get mad and strike the rock, David’s going to commit murder and adultery, these are going to be humans all throughout that God works with and loves and encourages and deals with, and chastens, and rebukes. His Word is never going to change, but he’s going to work with them. But Noah knew what wine was, Noah knew, had to know what drunkenness was, before the Flood the earth was filled with violence, he’s stepping back into something he had some knowledge of. There’s an old Japanese proverb that says “First a man takes a drink, and then the drink takes the man.” One out of every 14 people in the United States who taste alcohol for the first time will become alcoholics, and that statistic is on the rise, one out of fourteen who tastes it will become an alcoholic. [Noah getting drunk after spending over one year at sea in a ship filled with animals didn’t make him an alcoholic though, it kind of made him like a sailor hitting the beach after a long cruise out at sea. The stress of what Noah had been through must have been incredible, and his desire to relax and unwind and put all this behind him after all this must have been huge. I’m just making this observation from the view of a normal submarine sailor.] The Bible doesn’t condemn wine, it’s a sign of God’s blessing, the Bible doesn’t condemn, and I can’t condemn you if you have a glass of wine with your wife for dinner, I don’t expect anybody on our staff to do that, because I don’t believe you put the money in the offering bucket so they can go to the State Store and buy a bottle of wine, that’s not why you put money in the offering, it’s to do ministry. And I expect the pastors, and they are, to be above board on staff, they have no business compromising like that. In my own life, as for me and my house, I want my kids to grow up and never see a bottle of beer, bottle of whiskey, ever in the house. So if they get older and they decide that they’re going to rebel, I wanted them to remember we actually lived a completely happy life without any of that stuff. First context we have of it is sin, as failure. [Comment: When the JESUS movement, the Calvary Chapel movement started out at Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa, California, it was a ministry to those in the Hippie movement, and many of those Hippies were strung out on drugs and alcohol, so the ministry of Pastor Chuck Smith, and then of all the Calvary Chapel churches that came out of that movement became sort of a “hospital church” for those recovering from drug or alcohol abuse and addictions. So all their pastors and staff swear off the drinking of any alcohol, and of course, also illicit drug use, for the sake of those within their congregations that are recovering alcohol or drug addicts. The Bible itself teaches extreme moderation in alcohol consumption, or if that’s not possible, total abstinence, and of course does not condone illicit drug use. Any person adhering to extreme moderation in alcohol consumption will never become an alcoholic.] Drunkenness is sin, we all agree on that. So you can say ‘Well I just like to have a glass of wine,’ that’s fine, I just can’t have that. I mean, I don’t want to eat too much rum raisin ice cream, because I don’t want to get a buzz, if you understand. But you have to decide, if drunkenness is wrong, how much wine can I drink, ‘and that I notice if I drink a glass this size and start to get a little woozy,’ so you actually have to put a mark on your wineglass, warning, sin. Why even bother? I don’t have to know any of that stuff, I don’t have to know any of that. Noah fails, he finishes well, he fails here. And he’s laying in his tent naked, he’s drunk, he’s passed out, it doesn’t tell us how he got naked, trying to get changed, trying to put his PJ’s on, it didn’t tell us any of that stuff. He’s laying in his tent uncovered. ““And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw” and our Hebrew word means “to gaze intently,” so he’s staring at his father’s nakedness, the nakedness of his father, and told” …the Hebrew grammatist says this Hebrew word means “to tell with delight, insinuates mocking” he went and told “his two brethren without.” evidently laughing and mocking his father. You know, how you relate to somebody else’s sin tells a great deal about your heart. [A proverb says we are not to laugh at sin, make jokes about it] We’ve just seen so many lives destroyed by alcohol, by drugs, by immorality, by gambling, that our hearts are always grieved, and people say ‘Oh you’re judgmental,’ no, we’ve just seen the destruction, we’ve seen the pain, we’ve seen what it does. But this young man, for some reason, did he say ‘Dad?’ is he looking for him, did he think maybe he died? It doesn’t give us any information, just he opens the tent door evidently, there’s Noah laying there, uncovered, unrobed in some way, and he just gazes at him, and it doesn’t say what he thinks, but when he tells his brothers, there’s some perverse thing there, he tells them with delight. Make sure you don’t tell somebody else with delight when you hear somebody else has failed and sinned, because there’s something about that that God doesn’t look favourably upon here. “and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.” (verses 22c-23) that’s what grace does. “And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.” (verse 24) There’s a question mark, “had done unto him,” something is wrong here. Noah was also wrong, but something is wrong, now here’s the sad thing, verses 25, 26, and 27 are the only recorded words of Noah we have in the Bible, “now Noah says,” we hear about Noah before the Flood, but now we actually have words from Noah’s mouth, “And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” (verse 25) Would you please notice that, he does not say ‘Cursed be Ham,’ because there is a bigotry that’s promoted in the Church that says this is a curse that come upon the Black man, the Bible knows nothing about that. Out of Ham comes the Egyptians, the Persians, parts of Iran, certainly parts of North Africa, but the curse is not on any of them, the curse is on Canaan, one of the sons of Ham, and the Canaanites become a perennial enemy of Israel. And he’s not cursing Ham, he’s prophecying much like Jacob did on his deathbed over his sons, and told out the success and the failures of his 12 sons (cf. Genesis 49). Here Noah, awakens from this, he looks around, God ministers to his heart, and he’s prophecying now about his three sons, and in Ham’s family a specific line from his son Ham, particular line, which is Canaan, where the Canaanites come from, is going to be cursed. That’s what’s before us here, and it is a tragedy that people make more of it than it is. Now, here’s the other side of that. ‘Well that’s not fare, what about the Canaanites,’ maybe like somebody worrying about the guy on the island too [see my comment and links on a previous page, under the heading Fall HolyDays for a possible answer to that one]. Rahab was a Canaanite, and a prostitute, and she gave shelter to the two spies, and she said ‘the whole land has heard of your God, your God is the true God.’ And her faith that she extended towards Jehovah was real, she ends up marrying into the tribe of Judah, and ends up being the great-great grandmother of David, the king. And when you read the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 1, Rahab the harlot, the Canaanite is a member of the royal family. So there is a curse upon Canaan, that part of Ham’s line, but even amongst the Canaanites, those who would repent and turn to the True God found forgiveness, found forgiveness. “And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” (verses 25-26) that’s the first time the word “servant” is used in the Bible. He doesn’t say “blessed be Shem,” but “the LORD God of Shem…” Now Shem is going to be the lineage that Abraham comes from. The interesting thing is, as we study, if the chronologies are correct, Shem here, that got off the Ark with Noah, will outlive Abraham. Some even feel that Shem is Melchizedek, there’s tradition, there’s no hard evidence for that [personally, I believe Melchizedek is the pre-Incarnate Jesus Christ, none other than Yahweh God]. But Shem will outlive Abraham. “Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” (verses 26-27) And Japheth, the play on words, it means “to enlarge,” “and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem,” interesting thing, when he finds true religion, he finds truth in the tents of Shem. Paul says about the Gentiles in Romans 11 we shouldn’t be highminded because we’re not the natural olive branch, we’re grafted in. And this interesting prophecy, which says Japheth, which were all of Europe, the biggest spreading of people from the three sons, it says they shall dwell in the tents of Shem, they’ll find rest there, and Canaan shall be his servant. [Comment: Dr. Herman Hoeh, the historian of the Worldwide Church of God, who had a PhD in history, said Japheth ended up being the oriental races, like China, Japan and Southeast Asia, where some of the largest populations of the world reside.] “And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.” (verses 28-29) We have no details of anything else for the rest of his life. And if our chronologies are correct, he lived until Abraham was 58 years old. So there’s a possibility that Abraham talked to Noah. Almost certainly he talked with Shem, because he was of his lineage. What an interesting picture. Of course, through Christ, we’re going to come to chapter 10, chapter 11, the languages are going to be scattered and so forth. Then we have on the Day of Pentecost, we have them all speaking a heavenly language, and as we study through the Book of Acts, you have one of the sons of Ham, the Ethiopian eunuch, you have one of the sons Shem, Paul in chapter 9, and then you have one of the sons of Japheth, Cornelius in chapter 10, and you have Shem, Ham and Japheth gathered back under the Covenant of God’s blood in the Book of Acts [not sure about Cornelius being of Japheth], very interesting series of events as you study through. So, read ahead, next week we’ll jump into this Table of Nations, there’s some great stuff here, particularly as we watch the news today, if the Lord tarries till next week the way things are going in the world, but if he does, we’ll go through this 10^th chapter, and it will give us an idea of some of the stuff we see going on around us in the world today. Let’s stand, let’s pray…[transcript of a connective expository sermon on Genesis 8:1-22 and Genesis 9:1-29, given by Pastor Joe Focht, Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia, 13500 Philmont Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19116]