Scripture: Genesis 9:1-17
Structure:
- Introduction
- God’s blessing
- Ethical considerations
- God’s covenant
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
The New Zealander, Glenn Colquhoun, wrote a poem called ‘Playing God’. The first verse goes like this…
If you play God, play God at tennis.
A strict code of conduct is expected.
Clear lines must be drawn in the sand.
The ball will be either in or out.
At times there is talk of love.
To give some context, Glenn Colquhoun is a medical doctor. When practicing medicine, it is not always clear where the lines are drawn. Sometimes it is tempting to play God in the sense of making God’s decisions for him. But it’s best not to play God with medicine. Instead, play God at tennis. Have a conversation with him – back and forth over the net.
Today we conclude our series on Noah and the great flood. Over the past several weeks we have heard how humanity tried to play God; they crossed boundaries and lost. This morning we hear what happens after the flood.
From Genesis 9:1-17 we read…
Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds of the air, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves will be food for you.Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
4 “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal.And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
6 “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made humankind.
7 As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.”
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 “I now establish my covenant with youand with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenantwith you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbowappears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenantbetween me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbowappears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenantbetween God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenantI have established between me and all life on the earth.”
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
Today’s reading falls neatly into two parts. Verses 1-7 deal with God’s blessing and verses 8-17 look at God’s covenant. First let’s consider God’s blessing.
God’s blessing:
To bless someone is to give them something which is good for their well-being. A blessing leads to happiness.
The blessing may come in the form of words, like when someone says something encouraging to you which gives your spirit a lift. Or, a blessing could be demonstrated in deed. For example, if you need work and someone offers you paid employment, they are blessing you. The job will provide you with things that will promote your well-being and happiness.
By the same token, if you are overworked and in need of a holiday, then having someone cover for you at work blesses you. It supports your well-being and enhances your happiness.
You might bless your wife by doing the washing or you might bless your children by spending time having fun with them. Some of you blessed your (over 70 year-old) parents by organizing groceries for them while we were in lockdown recently.
Genesis chapter 9 begins with God blessing Noah and his family. There are essentially three aspects to God’s blessing here: procreation, provision and protection.
The second verse of Glenn Colquhoun’s poem Playing God reads…
If you play God, play God at chess.
All decisions must be black or white.
There are ways for him to be kept in check.
Bishops are available for consultation.
There is the possibility of mating.
Glenn is using irony to humorous effect in this verse. Theological decisions are seldom black or white and ultimately God will not be kept in check, but the Bible does seem to mention mating a fair bit, especially in Genesis.
In verses 1 & 7 of Genesis 9, God blesses Noah’s family with the words, Be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth. This is the procreation aspect of God’s blessing. It echoes the sixth day of creation in Genesis 1:28, where God says the same thing.
God’s word of blessing isn’t just a nice sentiment – it carries significant weight and translates to real positive outcomes in a person’s life. So when God says, be fruitful and multiply, that results in Noah having lots of descendants.
Of course, the blessing isn’t automatic. It requires some participation by the one’s being blessed. Noah’s sons and daughters-in-law needed to do their part too. But the main point is, life is a gift from God. Life is sacred because life belongs to God. Life is God’s to give and take as he chooses. Life comes from God and life returns to God.
We see the provision aspect of God’s blessing in verse 3 where God says, ‘Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you green plants, I now give you everything. In Genesis 1:29, on the sixth day of creation, God gave human beings every seed bearing plant on the face of the earth and every tree that bears fruit for food. Now, after the flood, God says people can eat meat as well as fruit and veges.
However, God also places some limits on eating animals. Namely, the animal must be living. So we can’t eat road kill or something that is already dead. The other limit is we cannot eat meat with its life-blood still in it. This does not mean we can never have a rare steak. It means the blood should be drained from the animal before the meat is cooked.
You see, in the ancient world people believed the life force (or the soul) of a creature was in its blood. As John Walton explains, “Ritually speaking, the draining of blood before eating the meat was a way of returning the life force of the animal to God who gave it life”. [1] This recognizes the life of the animal is a gift from God. The blood of a creature is sacred because life is in the blood and life belongs to God. Life comes from God and life returns to God.
Having said that animal life is sacred, there is a divinely ordained hierarchy in creation. Although there is an inter-dependence in nature, that should not be taken for granted, human beings are more sacred than animals or plant life.
Verses 5-6 of Genesis 9 read: And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal.And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made humankind.
You may be thinking, how does this fit with God’s blessing? Well, this is the protection aspect of God’s blessing. You will remember that prior to the flood both animals and humans had corrupted their ways and become violent. In other words, animals were killing people and people were killing each other. People were playing God by crossing all sorts of boundaries and undoing God’s order. It was moral chaos. That’s why God sent the flood to start again.
God is making it clear that he does not want a repeat of that. Killing people is not okay. It’s not allowed for a number of reasons. Chief among those reasons is that people are made in the image of God. Therefore, human life is especially sacred. ‘You can’t touch this.’ To kill a human being is to deface or assault the image of God. It is an insult to the Lord. Not only that but taking another human life, is to put oneself in the place of God. Life and death are God’s business not ours. We must not cross that line, without God’s permission. If you are going to play God, play him at tennis or chess.
Ethical considerations:
Verses 5 & 6 raise a web of ethical considerations. Most obviously there is the issue of capital punishment. Genesis 9 seems to be mandating the death penalty for murder. It is saying that human societies have an obligation to take a life for a life. So the general rule is that killing people is not allowed, except where someone kills another person.
The Law of Moses is similar. While it disallows murder, it does allow the death penalty for a number of crimes. However, there had to be two or three witnesses to the crime and if the killing was accidental the one guilty of manslaughter could flee to a city of refuge. So Israel’s law made room for situational ethics.
Looking at the New Testament, the apostle Paul went along with capital punishment in Romans 13:4, where he talks about the government being God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrong doer. Paul’s comment here is a generalization. Sometimes the authorities get it wrong. The Jewish and Roman justice systems got it spectacularly wrong with Jesus’ execution. But God used it for good.
Justice is not a one size fits all thing. There are times when the specific circumstances of the crime call for an exception to be made to the rule. For example, in John 8, Jesus saves a woman caught in adultery from being stoned to death, not because he was against capital punishment per se, but because the situation required it. The woman had been set up to trap Jesus and besides, the letter of the law required the man to be stoned as well, but he was missing. While the woman was guilty of adultery, it would have been a travesty of justice to allow her to be stoned. Jesus wisely applied situational ethics.
As Christians, the gospel holds up the ideal of grace and forgiveness and reconciliation. But Christian forgiveness is not automatic or unconditional. For forgiveness to stick and for reconciliation to be real, there needs to be honest confession and genuine repentance.
One of the risks of not having the death penalty is that dangerous criminals may reoffend taking even more life. This has happened before. But there are risks in keeping capital punishment as well. What if an innocent person is sent for a lethal injection? The justice system does not always get it right.
Some countries these days still have the death penalty, although it is not always carried out or it may be delayed. New Zealand abolished the death penalty in 1961. Some say this was due, in part, to the 1957 case of Walter Bolton, the last person in New Zealand to be executed for murder.
Walter was convicted of poisoning his wife Beatrice. Traces of arsenic had been found in small doses in Beatrice’s tea. The quantity consumed over the best part of a year was enough to kill her. Water on the Bolton’s farm was tested and found to contain arsenic, and traces of arsenic were also found in Walter himself and one of his daughters. The defence argued that sheep dip had inadvertently got into the farm’s water supply, so Beatrice’s poisoning was unintentional. No one in the family knew their water had arsenic in it.
However, the prosecution’s case was strengthened by evidence that Bolton had admitted to having had an affair with his wife’s sister, Florence. The idea that Beatrice’s death was a result of accidental poisoning then lost credibility. After deliberating for two hours and ten minutes, the jury returned a guilty verdict.
When the judge asked Bolton why there was any reason he should not pronounce the death sentence, Walter Bolton replied, ‘I plead not guilty, sir.’
A newspaper story later claimed that Bolton’s execution had gone horribly wrong, so that he suffered in the process. Some still claim that Bolton was an innocent man. What if an innocent man had been killed on behalf of the people of New Zealand? [2]
We have to be able to live with the choices we make. If a society is going to have capital punishment then, for justice to be done consistently, that society also needs to have no racism, no discrimination and no corruption in the justice system. What’s more they need to be absolutely sure before passing the guilty verdict, because there is no room for error with the death penalty.
These days the sentence for murder in NZ is a minimum of 10 years in prison, followed by life on parole.
Whatever your view on capital punishment it is clear, from Genesis 9, that God’s purpose is to bless his creation by reducing violence and upholding the value of human life. The two key Biblical principles here are divine sovereignty and human dignity.
By human dignity we mean human life is inherently valuable and sacred because we are made in the image of God.
And by divine sovereignty we mean God is in charge of life and death. The taking of human life is a divine prerogative which is permitted to human beings only by specific mandate. [3] It is not our place to play God. It is not our place to take the power of God into our own hands. That’s like saying ‘I can do without God. I can decide myself.’ That sort of thinking is the very essence of sin.
Following this train of thought, another one of the ethical considerations relating to Genesis 9 is the issue of euthanasia. While voluntary euthanasia is not the same as murder (in that the person being killed wants to die), euthanasia is still intentional killing. Whether voluntary or involuntary, euthanasia is deliberately introducing death into a situation in which it did not previously exist or is not imminently present. [4]
Because God is sovereign over life and death, because it is not our place to take the power of God in our own hands, we do not have a mandate to decide when we die.
By the same token we do not have a mandate to play God by intervening to prolong the process of dying. There is a fundamental difference between causing somebody to die (which is euthanasia) and allowing them to die (which is not euthanasia). If someone is already in the process of dying, our responsibility is to be present for them and make them as comfortable as possible. In that situation, providing quality palliative care is the compassionate thing to do. Giving pain killers to a dying patient in order to relieve their suffering may (in some cases) bring death on more quickly, but it is not euthanasia because death is already imminently present.
As a minister I have sat by the bedside of a number of people as they have died. I think there is some valuable learning in watching someone die, especially for the family and friends of the one who is dying.
Much of the learning is unique and specific to the individual but, in a general sense, we have the opportunity to learn acceptance. Acceptance of the loss we are experiencing. Acceptance of our own mortality. Acceptance of weakness and vulnerability. Acceptance that we cannot control everything and therefore we must learn to trust if we are going to live well.
There are other things we could say about euthanasia but we don’t have time to explore it all this morning. If you are interested in hearing more on this topic, then I encourage you to attend the seminar on ‘Euthanasia and Christian Faith’ to be held at Karori Baptist next Saturday 15 August from 4:30-6:30pm.
Returning to Genesis 9. After blessing Noah’s family in verses 1-7, God then goes on to make a covenant with all of creation in verses 8-17.
God’s covenant:
A covenant is a sacred commitment or agreement that should never be broken. It is stronger than a contract.
Three things we note about God’s covenant in Genesis 9:
It is inclusive in its scope, embracing every living creature, not just humans.
It is permanent, lasting for all time, as long as the earth exists.
And it is generous, God’s covenant is unconditional and undeserved.
Normally with a covenant there are obligations on both parties. The remarkable thing about God’s covenant in Genesis 9 is that it is entirely one sided. That is, God takes all the obligation on himself, without asking anything of his creation.
In verse 11 God says: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.
By committing himself to not destroy the earth by flood again, no matter how badly his creation may behave, God is showing considerable faith in his creation to do the right thing. This covenant is pure grace on God’s part.
Now it is important to understand what God is not promising as well. For example, God is not promising there will never be any localized flooding. And he is not promising to prevent man-made disasters (like global warming) either. Nor is he saying there won’t be other consequences if his creation misbehaves. (The final judgement is still coming and we need to be ready to give an account for how we have lived our lives.) God is simply saying he won’t send another flood on that scale to destroy the earth again.
Verses 12-16 talk about the sign of God’s covenant. The sign of a covenant is like the seal of authenticity. The sign of God’s covenant with Abraham is circumcision. The sign of God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai is the Sabbath day. The sign of the new covenant, established by Jesus, is communion.
The sign of God’s covenant with all of creation is the rainbow in the clouds. The rainbow is a seal guaranteeing the integrity of God’s covenant not to destroy the earth by flood again. The rainbow provides reassurance to all creation that life will go on. Therefore, we have hope. We do not need to be afraid.
The Hebrew word we translate as ‘rainbow’ is simply bow, ‘as in bow and arrow’, a weapon of war. [5] The image of a bow in the sky (relaxed and pointing away from the earth) suggests that God has hung up his bow. He has put his weapon away and won’t fire the arrows of a flood like this again.
Conclusion:
Derek Kidner makes the observation that the rainbow is out of human reach. [6] No matter how much you try you can never get close enough to touch a rainbow. It keeps moving away as you walk toward it.
This is quite different from the sign of the new covenant established by Jesus. Communion (the bread and the cup) are things we can touch and taste and take into ourselves.
In Genesis 9, the sign of God’s covenant is distant, remote, out of reach. Now, through Jesus, God draws near in a very real and intimate way. The message is clear. We cannot approach God in our own strength or goodness. Thankfully God, in his grace, comes to us in Christ to bless and sustain and renew.
Let us pray…
Questions for discussion or reflection:
What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
- What does it mean to bless someone? How have you been blessed lately? Who can you be a blessing to?
- Why is life (particularly human life) sacred? Why does God demand an accounting for the killing of human beings? What is wrong with killing people?
- How do the Biblical principles of divine sovereignty and human dignity guide our thinking on ethical issues like capital punishment and euthanasia? How might we use the whole of Scripture to help us navigate these ethical issues?
- Have you sat by the bedside of a friend or family member as they were dying? What happened for you in that process? What opportunity did this allow you?
- What are the three distinctive characteristics of God’s covenant in Genesis 9?
- Discuss / reflect on the significance of the rainbow as the sign of God’s covenant with creation. How is the sign of the new covenant (i.e. communion) different from the rainbow?
[1] John Walton, NIVAC Genesis, page 343.
[2] https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/the-death-penalty/the-last-execution
[3] Refer John Stott’s book, ‘New Issues facing Christians today’, pages 345-346.
[4] Ibid, page 376.
[5] Refer John Walton, NIVAC Genesis, page 345.
[6] Refer Derek Kidner’s commentary on Genesis, pages 100-102.
Tawa Baptist 