The Divine Covenants
The Noahic Covenant
The story of Noah is an amazing one and loaded with importance for us as the further revealing of God’s plan included in the everlasting covenant. Noah is the connecting link between the “world that was,” that was flooded, and the earth which now is “reserved for fire.” Noah lived in both worlds and was saved from the judgment that destroyed the old world.
A period of sixteen centuries passed between the covenant of works which God entered into with Adam and the covenant of grace which He entered into with Noah. Based on what Scripture tells us, we know of no other covenants during this time. But during those centuries sin was rampant until Genesis 6:11-12.
· Gen. 6:11-12, Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on the earth had corrupted their ways.
What an indication of God’s longsuffering; waiting for people of the earth to turn from their wicked ways. Noah was a righteous man and warned those who heard him of God’s wrath, but they did not listen. Evil continued to increase until God’s patience was at an end. The punishment that had been promised came and the ungodly were swept from the earth and the first great period of world history came to an end in judgment.
These are briefly stated facts that led to the Noahic covenant. The background of the covenant was divine judgment. Every individual of the ungodly race was destroyed. The great flood completely cleared the earth of their presence and their crimes. In due time the flood receded and Noah and his family came out of their place of refuge to re-people the earth. If we let our minds go to work on this situation it is hardly possible to imagine the feelings of Noah in this situation. As he observed the total power and destruction of God, he must have been overcome with the sinfulness of sin and of the holiness of God in a way he had never before felt them.
Just think of the situation Noah faced. The flood had totally changed everything. When Noah and his family first left the ark, as they looked around they soon realized that they were the only people on the earth; they had no emblems of their past and nothing to encourage them about their future. The paradise of Eden no longer existed. The only life that existed was the eight members of Noah’s family and the animals that he had loaded into the ark. There must have been an eerie feeling of “being alone.”
In Genesis 4 we are led to believe that there was a certain place where God was to be worshipped. As Noah reviewed his situation he must have strongly sense that God had done something miraculous in the lives of his family and that he was therefore moved to express the emotions of his heart in some appropriate way. So his first act on taking possession of the new earth was to worship God.
· Gen. 8:20, Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of the clean animals and birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.
Nothing could have been more appropriate. It was a recognition of his debt to God and an expression of gratitude for the grace that had been shown him.
However amazing the deliverance he had just experienced, whatever conclusions he might draw regarding the divine favor shown him, and however ardent his gratitude in view of the great mercy he had received, he was still just a man, and his novel situation had to create a certain anxiety in his mind. He and his family were faced with building a new world with very limited resources. He must have felt very insecure.
Why insecure? Well, think about it. He had an ark full of animals that he would release into the land and they would no doubt revert to their natural wildlife condition. Some would become ferocious. They would multiply, much faster that the eight humans would, and how would he and his family be able to cope with this animal kingdom?
Beyond this, he knew that mankind, what was left of it, was in a fallen condition, and that sooner or later temptation would come to some of them. After all, in the old world before the flood, he had seen the evil that existed in man and he had to assume that their nature had not permanently changed just because they had been delivered from the effects of the flood. In short, his anticipation of the future necessarily was based on his experiences of the past.
Outside of his own family, the worship of God had ceased to exist. What assurance did he have that the evil tendencies of men would be any different in the future as they re-populated the earth? And if the future would be much like the past in time, would not God find it necessary to bring a judgment on mankind again? There was only one answer to his concerns and that answer was God. So it is only as we consider the concerns of Noah’s heart that we can really appreciate the relevance of the assurance that God was now to give him. But God had given him a ray of hope.
· Gen. 6:17, “I am going to bring flood waters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark---you and your sons and your wife and your son’s wives with you.”
This gracious promise provided great consolation for his unsettled heart and maybe even gave him reason to have some cheer in his heart as he viewed the desolate earth all around him. Even so, Noah’s faith must have been stretched as he viewed his gloomy situation.
How would you have felt and what would you have been thinking if you were in Noah’s position? Would we have had any of the concerns that we have described? (Discuss) Well, listen to what God said to Noah.
· Gen. 9:1-4, 8-11, Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat that has its life blood in it. ….Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: I now establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you 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. I establish my covenant with you: 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.”
Did you notice that God controls all the wild animals so that they will fear Noah? What spiritual quality do you think was most important to Noah at this very time? Answer: His faith in God’s word!
Each of the covenants that we will study has a particular aspect to them that reveals a special feature of the everlasting covenant. All of them revealed God’s purpose, each adding something to what was previously known. In the Adamic covenant, what God said to the serpent, while announcing his doom, clearly intimated mercy and deliverance to the woman’s “seed”---an expression which was not limited to Jesus personally, but which pertains to Jesus “mystically”, that is, to the head and His body, the church.
You will remember that Lamech was the father of Noah and he was divinely led to give Noah his name. And the name “Noah” means “comfort” or “rest”. We cannot escape the significance of the Noahic covenant as it further reveals God’s plan in the everlasting covenant.
One of the first things that Noah did after leaving the ark was to build an altar and offer a sacrifice. So the divine institution of sacrifice provided a means of hope for the repentant sinner. And the sacrifice of Jesus, the “Mediator” of the everlasting covenant, was the provision of our “rest.” So the Noahic covenant pictured for us the coming of the One who would be sacrificed for our eternal rest.
· Gen. 8: 20-21, Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.”
Notice in verse 21 that the “pleasing aroma” that God smelled was the sacrifice of Jesus, because it was a sacrifice offered to God. A very revealing verse is Matt 23:19.
· Matt. 23:19, You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar which makes the gift sacred?
These were words of Jesus Himself and help us to understand the “pleasing aroma” that God smelled. The altar of Noah hinted at the One who offered the sacrifice of His perfect soul on the cross.
In the sacrifice of Jesus, God sensed the “pleasing Aroma” that not only met every requirement of His (God’s) holiness, but also satisfied His heart. Now notice the rest of verse 21. This seems to have no relation to what has just been said. But let’s look closely. There is a reference to the fact that mans heart is evil and here God is showing that the flood did not change the nature of man. He was still a fallen creature. So it was not because of any change in the nature of those that had been saved from the flood that God promised not to destroy the world again by flood. It was on the basis of the sweet smelling sacrifice that He dealt in grace. We should detect the difference between what God did in the covenant with Adam and what He did in the covenant with Noah. One was on the basis of works (Adams) and the other on the basis of Grace (God’s).
But now back to the covenant with Noah; God’s response to Noah’s offering on the altar was a pleasing aroma to God, pointing to the offering of Jesus. But Jesus’ sacrifice was not yet offered and it was over two thousand years away. So the satisfaction which Noah’s offering gave to God was a look back to the everlasting covenant in which the great sacrifice of Jesus was agreed upon.
Noah and his family safely passing through the flood, in the ark, is a type of salvation itself. And here we have an even higher truth in connection with the new creation as the inheritance of the saints as their blessing as heirs of Jesus.
· Gen 9:1, Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.
This is the first time we read of God blessing anyone since the Fall. Adam and Eve received blessing on the basis of their creature purity, that is, they were created pure. Noah and his sons (as representatives of the elect by grace) received their blessing on the ground of their acceptance and perfection in Jesus.
· Gen 9:1-3, 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 upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of 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.
These verses introduce us to the beginning of a new world. It was similar in some respects to the first beginning. But there was one great difference: all now rested on the covenant of grace.
This was a radical and fundamental change. Adam was made lord over the earth on the ground of the covenant of works. His position was totally dependent on his own conduct. As a result, when he sinned he lost his position of dominion over the creation. A further result was that he was expelled from the Garden of Eden and became nothing more than a laborer.
In the present case we see man reinstated over the inheritance that Adam forfeited, not on the basis of his own merits, but on the basis of God’s grace.
· Gen 6:8, But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
And this favor was on the basis of the excellency of the sacrifice which pleased God. Therefore, it was as the children of faith that the heirship of the new world was given to Noah and his descendents.
It was Noah’s faith and his obedience to God’s instruction to build the ark and to fill it according to His instructions that led to his being saved from the destruction of the flood.
· 1 Cor 15:45-47, The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.
Here we have a cardinal principle in the ways of God in the way He works out His plan. These words have direct reference to the worldly bodies of the saints. God’s grace is not fully apparent until it is contrasted with the sin of natural man. Therefore it was necessary for the covenant of works with Adam to precede the covenant of grace with Noah.
The failure of the first man provided the contrast for the Second Man---whom Noah clearly foreshadowed, as his name prophetically announced. REST. The more clearly we grasp this concept the better we will understand the deeper meaning of the Noahic covenant.
In order to understand the various covenants which God made with different men, it is essential that we distinguish between the literal and the figurative. In doing this we can separate the local from the comprehensive. Each of the covenants had a literal or material meaning, and also a mystical or spiritual meaning. Literalists and futurists sometimes fail to look at the deeper meaning of the covenants.
We have seen that Adam was more than a private individual. He was the federal head of all mankind. Each covenant God made with men shadowed some element of the everlasting covenant. In our study of the Tabernacle a year or so ago we saw that every aspect of the Tabernacle, including the measurements, had not only a utilitarian side, but also they had a spiritual reference to Jesus. The same is true of the covenants.
In the present case of the covenant with Noah, the literal meaning is very obvious; namely, the promise with the rainbow that God would never again destroy the world with water. But there was a deeper meaning in that promise. Noah and his family had been saved from the wrath of God which destroyed the rest of the living things on earth. Now the earth was to be restored. Here was a great opportunity for a wider revelation of the aspects of the believer’s salvation. To confine the benefits for Noah to the temporal and ignore the spiritual importance, would be as blind as to fail to see Jesus’ sacrifice in its spiritual significance.
There is a very relevant passage we need to see in Isaiah 54:4-10.
· Isaiah 54:4-10, "Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For your Maker is your husband--the LORD Almighty is his name-- the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. The LORD will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit---a wife who married young, only to be rejected," says your God. "For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,” says the LORD your Redeemer. "To me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth. So now I have sworn not to be angry with you, never to rebuke you again. Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you.
This passage in Isaiah suggests the gospel era. The church, in the form of Israelitish theocracy is pictured as a woman who had long been barren. Comparatively few Jews had become believers in the true God. At the time of Jesus, Pharisees and Sadducees were very common. But the death of Jesus introduced better times as the Gentiles were beginning to be saved.
By now one might be asking, why did God promise not to destroy the earth again by flood? The answer is because of the church. You see, when all of the elect have been saved the world will come to an end.
So from what we now see, while the literal welfare of the promise made to Noah concerned the temporal welfare of the earth and its inhabitants, the mystical importance had to do with the spiritual well-being of the church and its members.
· Gen 8:21-22, And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."
This promise contained in its deeper reference to the divine pledge that as long as the saints were left on earth, God would supply all their needs according to His riches in glory by Jesus Christ.
More and more we see that Noah is a type of Jesus.
· First as the one who removed the curse from the corrupted world, and as the rest giver to those who had to till the earth.
· Second, as the heir of the new earth, where there will be no more curse.
· Third, as the one into whose hands all things are now delivered. Noah’s sons or seed were the figure of the church. With him they are blessed. With him they were given control over all the lower creatures: so the saints have been made a kingdom and priests unto God:
· Rev 1:5-6 … and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father----to him be glory and power for ever and ever!
In the passage above where God promises never again to destroy the earth by flood, note that this promise was made four thousand years ago and the fulfillment of it is to be noted as the seasons change regularly as He said they would according to the laws of nature. But not to be overlooked is that behind nature’s “laws” is nature’s “Lord.” One therefore concludes that nature’s laws did not prevent the flood in Noah’s day but now we have the promise and He has been faithful to His promise.
· Genesis 9:8-16 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 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. I establish my covenant with you: 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." 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: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."
This is the fulfillment of the promise God made to Noah in the 6th chapter of Genesis. At this point we are going to concentrate on the sign of the covenant.
In the above passage we see God setting His rainbow in the sky. Now we should keep in mind that this was the first time that anyone in the world had ever seen a rainbow. You see, it had never before rained on the earth. So God’s purpose was to limit Man’s fears against another universal flood and to provide them with a visible pledge in nature. If man had seen rainbows before it would not have had the significance as it had in this instance. The fact that the rainbow was an entirely new phenomenon supplied a striking demonstration of the harmony of Scripture.
· Gen 2:5-6, … and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground---- So no rain had happened up to the time of the flood.
The first rain was sent as Divine judgment; but now God turns it into a blessing. The sunshine of heaven falls on the rain on the earth and the rainbow resulted. The rainbow is symbolically important, as the sign peculiarly connected to the covenant of Noah for, by its very nature it is an assurance of God’s mercy that He will forever keep in check the floods of deserved wrath.
The covenant of grace is beautifully expressed in the rainbow. Ebenezer Erskine, a preacher in about the 1730s, has made the following points about the rainbow:
“It is ordered by God. He created the rainbow. Likewise He has ordered the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace could no more have been made by man than could man have formed the rainbow. The rainbow was put in the sky by God once He smelled the sweetness of Noah’s sacrifice; so the covenant of grace is before us each time we participate in taking the Lord’s Supper. The rainbow is a divine security that the waters would no more destroy the earth: and the covenant of grace guarantees against a deluge of God’s wrath ever destroying any soul that by faith comes to Jesus. It is the sun which gives reality to the rainbow. So Jesus is the Son of righteousness, which gives being to the covenant of grace. Although the arch of the rainbow is high into the heavens, yet the ends of it reach down to the earth. It is the same with the covenant of grace. Although the head of the covenant is in heaven, through the Gospel, He reaches down to men on earth. Although the rainbow is a pledge against any future deluge on the earth, it is also an evidence of refreshing rain needed by the earth. So also the Spirit of the covenant of grace refreshes the spirit of the elect. The visible appearance of the rainbow is usually of short duration. It is often true that the memory of the blessings of the covenant of grace are short-lived in the believers mind. Even though the rainbow disappears, and that for long periods of time, yet we cannot conclude that God’s covenant is broken or that a flood will come and destroy the earth. So also the believer may not now see the full light of the covenant of grace, but the remembrance of it will keep his heart from fears of God’s wrath.”
The following is a quotation from Arthur Pink’s book, Gleanings in Genesis as to how he saw the parallels between the rainbow and God’s grace:
“There are many parallels between the rainbow and God’s grace. As the rainbow is the joint-product of storm and sunshine, so grace is the unmerited favor of God appearing on the dark background of the creature’s sin. As the rainbow is the effect of the sun shining on the drops of rain in a cloud, so Divine grace is manifested by God’s love shining through the blood shed by our blessed Redeemer. As the rainbow is the telling out of the varied hues of the white light, so the manifest grace of God is the ultimate expression of God’s heart. As nature knows nothing more exquisitely beautiful than the rainbow, so heaven itself knows nothing that surpasses in loveliness the wondrous grace of God. As the rainbow is the union of heaven and earth---spanning the sky and reaching down to the ground---so grace in the one Mediator has brought together God and man. As the rainbow is the public sign of God hung out in the heavens that all may see it, so the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. Finally, as the rainbow has been displayed throughout the past forty centuries, so in the ages to come God will show forth the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Jesus Christ.”
· Rev 4:3-4, 3 And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.
The canopy of God’s throne is a rainbow. We understand this vision in Revelation 4 to have immediate reference to the great exercise of God’s grace under the New Testament. The fact that the rainbow surrounds the throne denotes that the holiness, and justice of God, and all His works as the Sovereign of all worlds, had to do with His covenant of peace which He has made with all believers.
So the Noahic covenant served to bring a new light and establish on a firmer basis, the faithfulness of God and His unchanging purpose. It was important to provide an assurance that was needed just after the flood that God was not going to destroy the world again by flood. There was a need for confidence to this affect. So when His people see the rainbow, we can with full confidence believe that God is mindful of His promise and that He is faithful to keep His promises.