NOAHIC COVENANT
The Noahic Covenant is a response to the Great Flood and Human
Government. The Noahic Covenant is unconditional.1 This
Covenant was made with Noah and
his sons after the Great Flood, introducing Human
Government to curtail the sins of men. It was during this time that permission
was granted for men to eat the flesh of animals. Everything reproduces after
its kind and God promises never to destroy all flesh again by water.2 By the time of the Great Flood, there
had been nearly 1600 years of human existence under the curse. A condition of
this Covenant states:
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That
if the Jews would recognized their sins, they could bring an animal sacrifice
to God and God would accept them
In
those 1600 years, the human race had degenerated morally as technology grew by
leaps and bounds. By the time the
Great Flood occurred there were multitudes of people living on the
earth. The entrance of sin caused the human race to go down morally and
spiritually causing God to send the Great
Flood judgment upon that generation.
After the Great Flood, God came back and re-established another Covenant
with mankind. When Noah came off the ark with his family, the first thing he
did was build an altar to God.3 God’s Covenant to Noah at the time he
built the altar was to take of every clean (four-footed) animal and every clean
fowl or bird and offer burnt offerings on the altar.
When the Lord smelled the pleasing
odor [a scent of satisfaction to His heart], the Lord said to Himself, I will
never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination (the strong
desire) of man’s heart is evil and wicked from his youth; neither will I ever
again smite and destroy every living thing, as I have done. While the earth
remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and
night shall not cease.4 God
establishes Human Government in
order to maintain law and order.
There was no Government before the Flood
neither was there any established system of religion. There was absolutely
nothing to control the evil behaviors of humanity. God controls these
activities now by establishing the rite of mankind to set up authorities in the
earth to control behaviors of human beings.5
The establishment of authority in the earth brought about deterrents to murder
and other heinous crimes by promising that the guilty person would be put to
death. Every aspect of the human experience is covered under the Civil Laws. This was the beginning of
the establishment of authority; Israel’s Laws defined it in more detail. The
responsibility here is that every human being is to protect the life and the
property of other humans around him.
Capital punishment is established and
Scripture is very clear concerning it. Capital Punishment should be enforced
today because nowhere in Scripture has God ever rescinded it. Capital
Punishment was God’s only deterrent to a chaotic world and for holding society
together.6 Christianity and its Biblical concepts
have influenced western civilization unlike the eastern world. The United
States has a much higher esteem for human life than other nations where human
life is devalued. Without the Biblical presumption that human beings are made
in the image of God, human life would never be respected.7 The purpose of God placing a rainbow in the
sky was two-fold:
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As
long as we see the rainbow in the sky we are to remember God’s promise, and
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When
God sees the rainbow in the sky. He sees it as a reminder to Him never to
destroy the earth with water (Genesis 9: 13-14, 16-17)
Someday the whole earth will be
destroyed with fire, but never again with a flood.8
The reason why this was such a unique promise is because before the Flood it never rained on the earth:
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There
were no clouds to cause a rainbow
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The
earth was watered from beneath (Genesis 2: 5-6)
After the Flood, weather patterns came-in that resulted in rain. Now we
have terrible weather, dark clouds, and the rainbow. This promise made by God
became the Covenant relationship
between God and the planet earth and everything that’s in it.10
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