Bible Survey - Genesis 1-11
Genesis 1:11 · Randy Peterman · Feb 2, 2014
Bible Survey, No. 05
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926415237535

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

If I've ever had a challenging lesson, it's this one. One time, well one time, multiple times now I've gone up to Fort Collins and I've taught an entire chapter in one sitting. And I felt like that was really hard. And then my dad said, you're going to teach the first 11 chapters of Genesis. And I said, that?

There is so much in the first 11 chapters of Genesis because it talks about The beginning of the universe, which of course, then you get cosmology and you get those kinds of things. The book starts off with, in the beginning was God. So then you get into theology and how do we know that God exists. you get into the creation of mankind, so you could talk about anthropology, you have the first marriage by virtue of God creating Eve as Adam's partner, and so now you have, and then you have the fall, so you get marriage counseling, and then you deal with murder, then you deal with the flood, wow, and now, and that gets into geology, then you deal with Then you deal with God's covenant with Noah, and what does that mean, and how does that impact mankind, and then you're done. So, not a lot of material to cover, right? Well, the book of beginnings, and the beginning is always the sticking point, no matter what you're... Yeah, well, some beginnings are a little gentler than this one. How about that?

Genesis is a humdinger of a book. As we go through this material, feel free to ask questions, of course, but one of the things I want to say is that there's a lot of material on the Holly Hill site from when my dad did Genesis, more verse by verse. There's a supplement in the handouts. Who doesn't have a handout? Because I know that we had a printing issue this morning. There's a supplement, and that is actually from when my dad did the Genesis series. When we get to the Nephilim, we'll talk about that just briefly. Anyone else need a handout? Everybody's good? Maybe? Handout? Everybody's good? Alright. Okay, well, let's get started here.

So Genesis 1-1, in the beginning was God, or in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. John 1-1, as in the beginning, was God. And the first thing that stands out is that the Bible doesn't defend God's existence. Have you noticed that when you talk to atheists? They're like, oh, how do we know God exists? And then, of course, there's the argument, you know, if God really exists, then we should be able to say, do a miracle, or show yourself, or something like that, and then God will show up. And then we'll know God is real.

But the reality is that we have the situation of creation exists and there's no other explanation for it. The interesting thing about Genesis and the creation account that we find here is who was the witness? Who were the witnesses for the creation account? Only God.

So then where do we get the narrative? Let's think through this. It doesn't explicitly say, but let's think through the context of what we do get revealed. Where can we understand the narrative coming from? Well, anything we know about God is by revelation. Okay, so we have revelation.

It's not something which anybody can reason out. We just don't have the faculty or the We live in a world bounded by our dimensions of space and time and anything outside of that. It's hard for us to put our minds around for one thing, but that's the big distinction. Science claims to go by factual observation, and religion, whether it's Christianity or otherwise, anytime it talks about God, it has to be revelation.

Revelation has to come to individuals who then can tell them stories, so to speak. So what we have here is we have a narrative that was given to someone. I'm going to assume it's Adam, based on the sequence of events. It says that Adam and God walked together, so God could have said, hey, this is what I was doing for the last six days, or five days before I created you.

So God communicated and revealed this truth about the sequence of events that we have in Genesis here with chapter one with the creation. Rather than go through the days, which I think you can do reading if you want, or you've probably done in the past, let's just ask some questions about this.

Does the order reflect a life cycle pattern required by evolution? Could evolution easily be just fit in based on the way that it's taught in schools today into the six-day creation pattern? The answer is no. The short answer is no. There are some very serious problems biologically what you would need sequentially according to evolution that God doesn't provide.

God does it in His own out-of-order-for-evolution way. But He doesn't need the order of evolution for that to happen, because He's God. Because He's making it in the sequence, in the days that He has ordained as God of the universe. Okay, so when you look at this sequence of days, the first day, the earth is void, and so what does God do? God says, let there be light. right okay and then next you have and I was gonna not do this but you asked so so we'll do this so the next day he separates the expanse and so there's water and land and then God creates the dry land and God sprouts the vegetation and then he brings that forth and then let's see here I wasn't prepared for this very well.

Yeah, there's an at once and there's an order issue that's there. The other thing that I think is really problematic is the death issue. Evolution requires death. Death. There's a death, there's a billions of years death cycle that's going on and according to Genesis there is no death up until sin enters the world. So you have death issues and you have some chronologically interesting things.

The creation of all the animals at once on one day is a bit of a... Versus, yeah, you have And the thing is that the language for a day is a day. It's not like this could be an expanse of some time and the translators just willy-nilly picked a day and we just stuck with it. The quality of the Hebrew language allows us to understand that when there is a day with a number tied to it, it always means one day. There's always arguments from people trying to reconcile science with Christianity.

There's issues with... What's the guy's name that does the... He's the astrophysicist or something where he does all the... Hugh Ross. Hugh Ross, thank you. And Hugh Ross talks about, you know, well, if you look at the way that the light traveled through the universe and we measure that, then the universe must be X days old.

So you have all these things where we're trying to jam God into science, or science into God, but the problem is that science is making a bunch of assumptions by faith as well, in parallel. So jamming two faith systems together is functionally kind of silly. So we don't have a vagueness to what a day allows for.

And then lastly in this chapter we have in verse 26, after God creates the beasts of the field on the fifth day, in verse 26, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them." And then he said, be fruitful and multiply. So what characteristics does God making man in his image imbue man with?

What does that tell us about the quality of Adam and Eve? We'll start with them as the originals, and then we can maybe explore later on the consequences of the fall. What characteristics did Adam and Eve have? I'm going to pick on you, Abby. What kind of characteristics do you think they had? Do you think they just talked and mimed? No. What qualities did they have? What qualities do you have?

We'll ask that. What makes you a person? So there's life? and thinking? Creativity. Adam was the first English major or Hebrew major or whatever language that he spoke because he had the ability to speak and then he expanded on the language immediately by naming the animals. As far as to say wisdom? Okay, wisdom is probably a really good way to describe... Properly applied creative and analytical skills should hopefully be wisdom. The result for that would be wisdom.

When it talks about God bringing us to his, it's very in-depth. He became a living soul. He often used that nephesh and the other Hebrew words to distinguish between just being alive like animals and plants, and having an ability to appreciate beauty, to have a spiritual side, spiritual dimension to our life, and not just have hunger and pain and be reproductive. We're not biologically mechanical entities. So we could say we had a physical form, we had a spiritual form, and we had an emotional or being form that were inherently part of being that your dad uses from time to time where he splits the physical side and the spiritual side. The spiritual side is something that could only come from God.

So God creates man in His image and gives him characteristics and qualities that are distinct amongst all of the other animal-type creations on the earth. Then when we jump to Genesis chapter 2, We see that Moses, as he compiled the book of Genesis, brings in a second narrative of the making of mankind. And God tells Adam... What rules does God tell Adam? Because Adam gets some rules right off in chapter 2.

There's only two of them. What are they? Eat the plants. except for don't eat these plants. Okay, so you can eat the plants and then don't eat the tree or fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, that's the rules. He doesn't have ten commandments, he's got two. That doesn't sound very hard, right? Like, you know, I could do that.

And he doesn't have sin in the mix. He hasn't sinned yet. He doesn't have knowledge of good and evil. And we don't get a direct sense of the amount of time between God creating Adam and when the fall took place. We don't have like, oh, that was three weeks.

But yeah, so God brings Adam and he gives him these very simple laws. And then he brings the animals. The way the second narrative tells it is like he creates the animals and brings them before Adam. And Adam has to name them. So he's got to analyze them, he gets to be an engineer, and then he gets to be an artist when he comes up with their name. So we have that. And why does God bring the animals in front of Adam? Besides naming them, which is handy. Well, in the scripture it says that it was good that men didn't live alone. And the context of it was he brought all the animals before Adam and Adam named them, but none of them was suitable as a helpmate or partner. Yeah, he had no suitable partner. Right.

That's a pretty big gap. Look, he made pairs. He named them male and female of all the species. Boy, girl, boy, girl, names, names, names, names, names, and hey, wait a minute. See, he was a thinker. He was analytically realized, I'm alone in my species. So God puts him to sleep, takes a piece out of his side, forms it into Eve. That's pretty cool.

If you think about, I mean, It's hard to divorce ourselves from our modern context of society and population and finding spouses and partners and whatnot. But if you think about this in the first man on the earth kind of a context, it's really cool to think, okay, God knew the very specific qualities of the partner that Adam needed and brought her to him. And I have to share a joke that I learned in seminary here because it's just too funny. So Adam gets introduced to Eden and says, this is really cool.

I've got a partner and that's neat. And God says, hey, go over there and give her a kiss. Adam says, what's a kiss? And God describes it. And he walks over and he gives her a kiss. A few minutes later, Adam comes back. And God says, what's wrong? And he says, what's a headache? OK. Sorry. Abby, I'll explain that to you when you get much older. So that was during a Genesis intensive that we did in seminary. And we were taking notes so aggressively and vigorously that when Arnold Fruckenbaum, the professor, actually told that joke, half of us had written it down before we started to laugh because we'd been so concerned about getting everything he said down on paper.

So anyways, Adam gets introduced to Eve, and then in Genesis 2.24, I think it's actually a really critical verse. Let's go ahead and read that.

Genesis 2 24 for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh That verse is quoted later on in scripture as a very important reason why husbands and wives Should be separate entities Now my mother-in-law is here in the room.

She's out of town and she's in here But as it as it turns out, she's a good mother-in-law, and I'm not just saying that because she's here. I But there are lots of jokes about mother-in-laws or father-in-laws or both on both sides getting involved in marriages and not letting the new family that is getting started go be a new family. And there's a principle here that is really important of leaving and cleaving and going and being one flesh.

And that's not obviously just talking about sexual intimacy. It's talking about the principle of relationship of having one mind and one life before the Lord. And then in 25, he says, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. And of course, there's a lot that could be delved into with that.

We don't have time for that this morning. But nakedness is something that is special inside of marriage now, at the time their nakedness was not remarkable to them. They didn't notice it, they didn't think about it. When they fall, when sin enters the world, suddenly their nakedness matters. We have an entire culture that is permeated with very polarized views about nakedness, but rarely are they based on biblical scenarios.

So, when we take a look at Genesis chapter 3 and we take a look at the fall, there is a lot to be gleaned in chapter 3. And because we're doing a summary overview, it's just going to be right through it, and I apologize. But you should go back and listen to the recordings from the Genesis class this week if you have time, just because there's a lot of good meat in this passage.

So the scripture says the serpent was crafty, more crafty than any of the other animals, and the people at Hobby Lobby were disappointed to hear that. But the serpent comes up, and he appeals to this analytical and creative brain of Eve, and he questions God's statements about the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But the serpent knows the consequence of knowledge of good and evil. This seems to be related to something satanic. It's not explicitly stated that it was Satan here, but other passages reference that later.

He's a liar and a murderer, as you called him. So therefore, in order to have the murder get carried out, that's the only way to do it. One tree will do it. But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that he can be the liar and the murderer with that. Yeah, he gets to lie and deceive, and he gets to bring death into their lives.

Because before that, there was no death. There was no indication that Adam and Eve would have ever died. Which is kind of massive to take in. So Adam and Eve... Eve gets this, and the thing is that the lies of Satan And the lies of the flesh, now that sin has entered into mankind, are the same kind of lies. He's never changed his strategy.

Even when you start to feel guilt, let's say as a believer today, and none of you have ever sinned, I'm sure, maybe it's just me, I'm the only one here that sins all the time, right? But when we sin, and we start to feel guilt, why do we feel guilt? Because we have a knowledge of the good. Okay, yes, but we're believers. Let's say everybody in this room is, to my knowledge, a believer. Should guilt enter the equation as a believer? The answer to that is no. I'm going to answer that. And then let's ask why. Well, we say that we don't talk about guilt as much as we talk about repentance.

We take 1 John 1.9 and say, confess your sin to God and move on. Alright, but we've been justified, right? And the sin has been paid for. Guilt for the sin that has been paid for is unnecessary emotional energy wasted.

What does the Lord want us to do? He wants us to walk in fellowship. The Spirit convicts us and says, let's go back to being fellowship. I want to have a great intimate relationship with you. That's what he's interested in. But what does the flesh and what does Satan do whenever we sin, when he catches us in our sin? What is the response of the flesh?

Did God really say you're righteous? Did God really pay for that sin? You should feel guilty for a while, because that'll make God know that you really are sorry for what you did. The same lies still kick in today, it's just different things that God has revealed.

It's a bigger context now. that we know of, but it's the same strategy to distract us from just walking in fellowship with God. Adam and Eve were walking in fellowship with God, and Satan's like, hey, look at that over there. Let's distract you. So the lying pattern has not changed in the thousands of years since this took place.

Then God comes and finds them that they've decided that haute couture leaves And he's disappointed because he knows it's cooler than that. I've got other clothes for you. So when God confronts them in Genesis chapter 3, first of all, he goes around looking for them, which I think is just a tremendous narrative point. Hey, where are you guys? Like, he's God of the universe. He knows exactly where they are. He has out-of-need GPS, and it's accurate to zero meters, right?

So he finds them, and what's Adam's excuse? Because he goes to Adam first. What's Adam's excuse? It's the same excuse man has been using ever since. It's the woman's fault. Right? So it's the woman's fault, and God of course says, yeah, that's actually not an out. Too bad for you. The woman says, it wasn't me. It was the serpent. Still not an out. So God deals directly with the serpent first, but indirectly actually shares some things about the woman as well.

So I'm in Genesis 3.14. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field on your belly you will go. So he was craftier and wiser in this case than all of the other animals and now he's the only thing he's more is cursed. More than crafty he's cursed. And dust you will eat in all the days of your lives and I will put enmity between you and the woman in between your seed and her seed, and he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel."

So, what is verse 15? As far as a landmark in scripture? It's a prophecy of someone who's going to come from the seed of the woman. Well, who's the only one to be born of just the seed of the woman? Christ. So the first prophecy in all of Scripture for the Messiah comes immediately after the fall.

And yet it's a little vague. We know that now. We can look back and go, aha, that's what he's talking about. At the time, Eve didn't really have a lot to go on, if we're honest. But we know that something is going to go on between the seed of the woman and the serpent. And Adam's left out. He's going to deal with some other things. In verse 16, and to the woman he said, I will multiply your pain in childbirth. I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth.

In pain you will bring forth children, yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. Part of me knows that God's timing of things was perfect, so I don't have to worry about what had happened if Eve had had children before the fall, because then they'd all have had to have Consumed the fruit although they probably would have been there just like Adam and going okay, you know so but but the indication is that childbirth would not have been painful which to me is like fascinating because I watched my wife birth two children, and I thought that is Really tremendous, and I'm glad I'm not going through it And the nurse had to tell me actually while Jessica was in labor with Abigail, just one finger, give her one finger, because I'd given her several fingers to squeeze when she was in pain and it was like death grip and my knuckles were going to shatter. So that let me know on a very personal level that the pain was even more excruciating than that. And I was sad that Eve had decided it was a good idea to eat the fruit because that was hard watching my wife in pain. So pain. enters childbirth, which as a consequence is very interesting because if you think of man's response to consequences, everything is external, right?

We can only control the external things on other people for the most part, although with modern medicine we can do some pretty freaky internal things. God could change DNA. God can change internal things and say, well you're the prototype, now y'all get it. And the DNA shifts and changes there.

So all women will unfortunately have the consequence of painful childbirth. In 17, then, to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it, cursed is the ground because of you, and toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you will eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

So Adam suddenly has manual labor of a painful sort involved. There's an indication earlier in Genesis chapter 2 that Adam was to maintain the garden, but it wasn't toil, it wasn't with thorns, it wasn't hard labor. So God sends him out of the garden and he's got to go work. But before Adam and Eve go, what does the Lord give them in verse 21? It's the first clothes not made out of fig leaves. The only clothes not made out of fig leaves at the time. But what was the consequence? What had to happen for those garments?

Death had to enter the world. And so death has entered the world. Adam and Eve have died spiritually. They've had separation from God. By faith, Adam and Eve took the garments, and by faith, Adam and Eve believed what God said, and by faith, they left the garden. So can we with relative confidence say that Adam and Eve were saved? Not as newborn believers in Christ, but saints of the Old Testament? Do you feel relatively comfortable saying that? Because I've heard lots of people say, oh, I was told that Adam and Eve weren't saved. And then they weren't believers. But from this, they believed and they responded in faith.

Not too much. The content of their faith, we use KOM as our, what is it called when you have letters that are strung together? I use them all. Three letter acronym. There we go. So the acronym of KOM there. Sorry. Brain farted on that. So we have the fall, they've left, and an angel is left guarding the garden. And now I have not very much time to cover a bunch more chapters.

But because Adam and Eve At send Eve had to go through painful childbirth, but chapter 4 tells us that didn't keep her from having children and so she had at least two children by the time chapter 4 comes around and Cain and Abel are born and It says Abel was a shepherd from what we can tell he's probably collecting the wool for garment making And Cain was a farmer. And we don't get told explicitly why they brought an offering, but it says they brought an offering to the Lord. We don't hear a command for an offering. But it seems that it's the first fruits of their labors, they bring the offering, and God is pleased with the animal offering that Abel brings, and He's not pleased with Cain's offering. And the thing is that I always got wrapped up in the offerings and why the offerings, but what's interesting is that Abel comes to Cain, because Cain's all bent out of shape.

He's like, hey, don't walk in sin. It's at the door, creeping, ready to pounce on you. You must master this. Don't let the sin control you. And that just makes Cain even more mad. This reminds me of me and my brother when we were much younger, and we would fight over the dumbest things, and get really angry at one another over the stupidest things.

And here, Abel's going, hey, you know, calm down. Just keep serving the Lord. It's okay. Cain's like, I'll show you, right? And then murder takes place. Now here's the thing. What's the consequence of murder? What has God put in stone about murder up to this point? You got a head nod? No, nothing. Nothing has been put in stone. So Cain has not done something that is going to reap punishment immediately yet. We're going to find out by the time we're done with this class, if I move fast enough, that God deals with that very explicitly.

But Cain falls into the same temptation of his parents in walking into sin because he's, you know, should I love my brother and take care of my brother that came from my same mother? That seems like the right thing to do. He sears his conscience and continues and goes on in sin. Then he freaks out because God calls him on it.

And God says, I'm going to put a special mark on you so that no one will murder you in retribution. And then Cain goes out and he lives off east of Eden. Now there's more stories about Lamech and another guy who sees this story with Cain and decides, he declares of himself that he's going to be even more murderous. Which is unfortunate.

But in chapter 5, we're going to keep blazing through this. In chapter 5, we get a list of the descendants of Adam. And for the most part, a lot of these names are somewhat unremarkable. But let's ask, why is it important that we get a list of Adam's descendants?

From a biblical perspective. It's not just another Excel spreadsheet. We get lineage to Christ, and I think that's really important. The scriptures tie Christ all the way back to Adam. And we can do that because we have this record. We have these names that are recorded of the different generations and of descendants.

But it is important, I think, if we jump down to 5.23, you see, so all the days of Enoch were 365 years. And in verse 24, Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him. And the impression is not that Enoch passed away or got senile and wandered off into the wilderness or something, it's that God literally took Enoch in a non-death manner and brought him to himself. And that's kind of cool. We don't know more than that, but that's pretty phenomenal that such a thing would just be recorded. Hey, here's this little tidbit about this guy named Enoch. Okay. But it's really neat that we have that.

And of course Methuselah who at least according to scriptures of what was recorded was the oldest man that ever lived. The next chapter when we get into chapter 6 is In my Bible, they title it the corruption of mankind. The funny thing is that mankind... Mankind was already corrupt when we get to chapter 6. The title was a little awkwardly placed. I was like, you missed it. But mankind is walking in evil.

In verse 3, then the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be one hundred and twenty years. So God sees the wickedness, and He's like, you know what, if these people get, as they get older, they get more wicked. I almost said wickeder, which I know is not a proper English, but it sounds good. So He limits the number of their days. This is fine.

Methuselah, we go from the oldest guy that is recorded in the scriptures to, we're cutting that off. We just can't have that, because the older they get, the more wicked they get. In verse 4, we get... Do you think that someone like that had to do with God's decree to say multiply and fill the earth because later the Tower of Babel was in contradiction to what God had said to do.

Yeah, well, but that comes after the flood. Right. If you live for a thousand years, and the record shows all this procreation going on for longer periods of time than we think are going on, in a sense, part of God's plan would be that if men were living according to God's will, that perhaps he would have maintained no longer. Yeah, and as a result of the sin, yeah. Living longer, having a longer time of procreation would help populate the earth as God told man to do. Yeah, but at their current rate they're populating it with wickedness, which obviously fruitful and multiplying in wickedness is not very useful.

So the Lord limits the amount of time, and in verse 4 we get introduced to the Nephilim. You've got a supplement at the last page of your handout there, it's actually page 5, that talks about the Nephilim and the various theological views. Because my time is limited, I'm just going to say look at the handout, and if you have questions about it, we can talk about it after the class, but our time is limited, so we'll keep moving forward. The Lord finds in the last half of 6 He finds Noah to be the exception. Noah is the guy who's not walking in just utter wickedness.

And so God says, I'm going to destroy the earth. He laments that he has made mankind. I'm going to destroy the earth. And Noah built an ark. Bill Cosby's routine always comes to mind when I get it. Right, what's an ark? So, God explains to him the geometry of the Ark.

The thing is that this is a brief summary. I have often kind of pondered how much interaction did Noah and God actually have. He's like, okay, let's really talk about this. Because if God told me to build a thing, I would want to really know how to build the thing. And when you get to Moses, and God is going into the details of the tabernacle, and here's the Ark of the Covenant. That's a different ark, but he's got lots of nuance in there. This ark, we kind of get, hey, build it out of gopher wood. Okay. And it's going to be this cubits by this cubits by this cubits and done. Alright. And we move on. So I'm sure there's more detail that was there, but it's just not revealed in the text.

So Noah builds it, takes him a while. All this time, of course the joke is he would have looked crazy, but during that time he would have said, listen, God's wrath is coming. You know your great-grandpa Adam, because they're all old and they're all related to him. You know he fell. You know that God has a plan for us and we should be walking in that.

And the people didn't listen. It didn't matter. So Noah and his sons and their wives get on the ark. So we've got eight people and all the animals. The other thing I want to point out is that God says get food. and bring it on the ark for you and your family. Just get food.

For us, that's like mason jars, right? And canned goods, and beef jerky, because, well, they wouldn't have meat, right? So, but there doesn't seem to be this deterioration that we see. It's not a packet special. It's just, he just got food. And the Lord seemed to preserve the food and take care of it. So that's an interesting nuance there.

Then we hit the flood in chapter 7. And with the flood, the thing that I think is really important with the flood, how many of you have heard the idea that the flood was not a global flood? This is a common idea where people just have a hard time with the idea of a global flood. The context that's there in scripture implies that it is a global flood and God wiped out all of the things that were on the surface of the earth except for what was in the ark. So the flood takes place, they appear to be on the ark for a little over a year, which is quite a bit of time to be in confined spaces.

I work in my basement for the last eight years and I got to go out of my basement all the time and that was great but if I had to be in a space like my basement that was rocking and rolling in the waves for a whole year that would be a bit much. So that was pretty intense. Then in chapter eight we have the account of the water subsiding, God sends a wind, and it seems like there was a firmament that was over the earth before that is now no longer there, and so we have the water cycle kind of begins as we know it today. And so we have the seas separating from the land, we have a water cycle pattern that seems to be a new thing, and so Noah and his family get off the ark, and what does Noah do first?

He offers up a sacrifice. Thanks for taking care of us and sustaining us. The aroma was pleasing to the Lord. Verse 21 of 8 says, The Lord smelled the soothing aroma, and the Lord said to himself, I will never again curse the ground on account of man. For the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done." So the Lord sets those things aside, or sets that consequence aside for the future.

And in chapter 9, we see God's covenant with Noah. And if you look at your handout, I've got it as a bullet point list there. the tenets of that covenant. Mankind is to populate the whole earth, just like Adam was told to do. Be fruitful and multiply, to Noah and his descendants.

Animals will begin to have a fear of mankind, and I think that's pretty fascinating. Before that, the animals weren't afraid of mankind, because they were vegetarian. Men weren't going to harm them. for the most part, although you do see an account in chapter 5 of a few people being hunters, which would have been malicious, because the animals weren't afraid of them. So the animals will begin to have fear. Mankind is instructed that vegetative food is okay, but they can also eat animals. Now that the animals will run away, that's pretty equitous there. Animals that kill humans should be killed. And then in the last ten is man will not be allowed to kill another man, especially a brother. So God responds to Cain and Abel and says capital punishment is instituted.

Now here is an important question about Noah's covenant. Does Noah's covenant apply to us today conditionally as believers? One thing, Noah's covenant is earthly. It's earthly, so conditionally, yeah. Does Noah's covenant This earthly covenant, does it apply to believers today? We know the law doesn't apply to us, but does Noah's covenant apply to us? The answer is yes. Capital punishment is really being able to eat bacon. Those are the two. Or meat. Steaks. Chicken. Emu. Elk. Whatever you like. Ostrich is delicious. If you can have it, try it. But we can eat those meats and we have God's blessing to do so.

But we have capital punishment instituted. So today, in the United States, fewer and fewer people are facing capital punishment. And that's mankind saying, we know better than God. Functionally, we have a government that has decided, just like so many before, we don't need to do what God says. We know better. So in 9, we get this covenant with God, and of course the sign is the rainbow, which has been hoisted by the homosexual and that political movement. Then in the second half of chapter 9, Noah's son...

So there seems to be fermentation as a new thing. Or there's an implication that fermentation might be a new thing. Because that would indicate that the food would spoil. the bacterial life form seems to change. So on the Ark, this is a bit conjecture, but there's kind of an element of this might have been a change.

Because Noah gets drunk, and his son Ham sees him naked and starts laughing. And his brothers are embarrassed for him and cover up their dad. And then Noah curses him. And Ham's descendants are in part, the Canaanites, which Israel would later on be commanded to go wipe out because they'd gotten so perverse and ruined the value of life in their culture. Chapter 10 gives us a list of Noah's descendants.

So we're not going to go over that in detail, but it's a lot there. Chapter 11 is the Tower of Babel. and while I've only got a minute or so before people start banging on the doors, the Tower of Babel, the people, I remember when I heard the story as a kid in Sunday school, they always emphasized the tower as though the tower was going to go up to the heavens and literally they were going to reach the gods. That's not the implication.

What's the purpose, according to scripture, for the Tower of Babel? It's to make a name for themselves so that the people will not disperse, they will stay in one place. Which is in direct disobedience to God's command to go out and be fruitful and multiply and cover the planet. It was a marketing strategy. And it was a bandwagon one.

So God comes down and visits, which I think is kind of cool. He visits the tower. Hey, let's check this out. Even though he's God, so he could observe it from the inside as well if he wanted, right? So God is the creator of language, right? We discovered with Adam that he immediately knew language. Here God creates all kinds of languages all at once to separate the people and disperse the people across the planet.

I've got a last question on the handout there. It says, how does language impact the earth today? Because I want us to kind of recognize the fact that this is still actually going on. How does language impact us today? I don't know how it impacts the earth any differently, but I know among Christians, we have various Bible translations.

They use different words. intellectual and emotional response that they bring with them when we think of them. So anytime you have different languages, you have a problem of communicating the original idea. It goes from my brain to my mouth to your brain and then gets interpreted. Well, there can be confusion there. I mean, there is that.

But as far as the global language issues are concerned, do we still face that today? Or can we just Google what everybody says and then just translate it? Well, we've got people who made up that language, and I've forgotten its name now. It's supposed to be a universal language so we can all have a global economy and we're on brotherhood. Esperanto. Yeah, so we have... Esperanto, wasn't it? Yeah, that's... yeah. But language still impacts us today.

This is just an observation from my field in computer science. But what's interesting is that there's multiple computer languages that are used to program down into machine code. And so much energy gets spent in making the same things happen in different languages that The software development community really is glacially slow, if we're honest, about how fast we can move in software development, in part because, oh, you're using Java? I know C++. Oh, I'm a PHP person.

Oh, I like, you know, and so everybody has their different languages. And so we write the same thing in all the languages, and we make that little tiny step forward technologically. You know, it's like, oh, here's a new idea, and let's do that all in the same languages. Let me move a little bit. in pride, and I'm going to do it my way, and I like it my way, and all those things kind of work together. But language impacts us still today, despite Google Translate, so that we have a harder time communicating.

I looked at my watch on my wrist that isn't on. We're over time, so we should close in prayer. Any thoughts, questions, things that you wish I hadn't said? Alright, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the truth of your word. Thank you that you immediately, upon the fall of mankind, told us that hope and a Savior was coming. We ask that you would direct our hearts and minds to things above this week as we look forward to your return. And we thank you so much for your graciousness and preservation in our lives today. In Jesus' name, amen.