Colleen and Nikki discuss the covenant that God made with Noah which included the sign of the rainbow. Podcast was published March 11, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Today we’re going to be talking about something that I used to think was almost a nothing. And I’ve come to see it as a really amazing and exciting part of the Bible which a lot of people don’t think about. We’re going to talk about the Noahic covenant, God’s covenant with Noah. We’re continuing our series on the covenants, which we began last week, and we just hope that you stick with us for the ride because these covenants are not at all what we were taught as Adventists. Nikki, what did you think of Noah and the Noahic covenant as an Adventist? What did you think about the flood, for that matter?
Nikki: You know, I have to say that what I thought about it is completely contained in a painting, and I think it was Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories or – no, it was the Bible Stories. Is that the –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So there’s a picture in there of people. The ark has been closed, the rain’s coming, the water is rising, and the people are reaching their arms out to heaven in distress, trying to escape the flood, and I think they’re climbing up on rocks, and it’s just this horrifying picture.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And I stared that so much as a kid, and so anytime Noah comes up, that picture comes to my mind.
Colleen: Oh, that’s so interesting. You know, I stared at that same picture. That’s really interesting. That picture has been around for generations.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I’m sure it’s still there, and kids are still staring at it.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s a little horrifying, when you think about it.
Nikki: It was really scary, and it was hard for me as a young kid, looking at that picture, to know how to think about God.
Colleen: Talk about that a little. What do you mean?
Nikki: Well, the fact that He could do that.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: The fact that He could destroy the earth that way and allow people to drown. I don’t know. To inflict that kind of punishment on humanity, that was horrifying. And the thing is, as a child that story wasn’t told to me in the context of God’s holiness.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And the emphasis on His mercy to Noah and to the family and how He protected them – the whole story was told from the perspective of humanity.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And so I really didn’t know how to think about God. I only knew how to see what humanity suffered because of what God did.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And I knew that Noah and his family were rescued because they were obedient, they behaved.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: They did what they were told, and so they got to get on the boat.
Colleen: Well, I remember two things. One thing I remember is hearing that Ellen White said – and I know she did because I have read this kind of thing in her – but I remember also hearing people say that the Adventist church was the ark of safety. So that whole story came to me originally as a bit of a metaphor for Adventism in the world. So if you get on that ark of Adventism, you’ll be able to make it safely through the terrible times that are coming upon the world, but get on that ark of safety. Now, to be fair, I don’t think my parents necessarily bought that idea fully. I remember my mother actually being a little disparaging about that notion, that the Adventist church was the ark of safety. She had a bit more of an understanding that God was the ark of safety, but it was definitely taught as an Adventist thing. But the other thing I remember is that I never really understood how to reconcile the flood, or even to think about the flood, in connection with the rather liberal view of God that I learned, which is that God doesn’t have wrath. And I was taught bad things that happen are not God’s fault. He doesn’t do bad things. He doesn’t make people die. He allows Satan to get in there and to hurt us, but then He’ll redeem it in some way, but He doesn’t do the bad things. Now, that was a very confusing view for me too. And how do you explain the flood with that view.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But then, you know, somebody loses a family member in a car accident, and oh, no, no, God had nothing to do with that. He just allowed it. So there was so much confusion for me.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But you told me earlier, Nikki, about some things about the flood that really made you fearful, things your parents had said or –
Nikki: Well, yeah. I mean, I had a picture of God that you either obey, you fall in line, or He’s going to do something drastic, and I even remember hearing my mother say to me, “Nikki, I hope God doesn’t have to do something real serious to get your attention.”
Colleen: And then you’d see those people screaming in the water.
Nikki: It was just this overall picture of God that – even the ark. I mean, if we’re going to put it in the context of Noah, even the ark really was about me and my behavior, to get on the ark.
Colleen: Interesting.
Nikki: I didn’t hear that God didn’t have wrath until I came to the West Coast.
Colleen: That’s interesting.
Nikki: I never heard that. I had the picture of Him that you shape up or ship out. Yeah, that was completely new to me. I liked the idea of God not having wrath. It was appealing to me because I was so afraid of His wrath.
Colleen: Um-hmm. And, you know, I find it kind of schizophrenic when I think back because I really was raised in a very historic Adventism, and yet at the same time, I was taught that God isn’t so domineering that bad things are His fault. He’s not responsible for the bad things. So things like the flood were anomalies that I couldn’t connect to other parts of the Bible or to other experiences. They were like one-off things, even though they were really big, and clearly something terrible happened, and God let everybody die because everybody was bad.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But I didn’t know how to connect that with who God was.
Nikki: There was no revealing of the person of God in that story, in my childhood anyway.
Colleen: In mine either. Now, interestingly, the Bible actually does tell us something about it that I didn’t know. The flood is recorded in Genesis 7, and in Genesis 6, which is a fairly short chapter, we learn that the reason the flood came, the reason God sent the flood, was because humanity had become so evil and so corrupted. People differ on how to interpret Genesis 6. That’s the chapter with those enigmatic strange Nephilim in it, but whatever the case, however one understands that, it’s clear that humanity, the actual human race, was being corrupted to a point the identity of humanity was being affected in some really negative, evil way. And God put a stop to it. His judgment on the world was not a random, capricious thing. Whatever the case, the human race had become so corrupted by evil that God had to wipe it out instead of just taking out a few people. We don’t really know how bad it was or exactly what happened, and for some reason – and I think it’s for our own protection – the Lord has not revealed that to us. The Bible does not tell us the details. But the flood came as a way of protecting the human race because God had promised something to Eve. What had He promised her?
Nikki: He promised that He was going to send someone to save them.
Colleen: Yes, exactly, who would crush the serpent.
Nikki: Yeah, the Seed of the woman.
Colleen: Yes! So that’s what God is doing. He is preserving the Seed He promised, and the human race had become so corrupt, He actually had to wipe it out, and He started over with Noah and his family. And it’s an interesting story. By the time we get to the end of Genesis 8, after the flood – I don’t think we need to recount all the details of the flood – we come to where Noah exits the ark with his family, and he offers sacrifices to God. So why don’t all of you listening get your Bibles and turn to Genesis 8. And, Nikki, if you don’t mind, could you just start by reading verses 20 to 22, and let’s just talk about that a little bit before we get into the actual covenant God makes with Noah.
Nikki: “Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and took some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in His heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.'”
Colleen: That’s a very rich three verses, actually, when you think about it.
Nikki: Yeah, it is.
Colleen: The first thing we notice in verse 20 is that Noah took clean animals. And I’ve heard this argued in Adventism, that if there weren’t clean animals, if the law wasn’t eternal, how would Noah have known what was clean, because the law comes in Exodus, and here’s Noah offering clean animals, and we know that seven of every clean animal went into the ark and two of every unclean animal went into the ark. How do you understand this now?
Nikki: Well, what I understand now is that we don’t get to fill in on the white space. It doesn’t say that they had the law.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: It doesn’t say that they had the commandments. Clearly they knew something. Clearly something was going on. They did do sacrifices. We know God did when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. But we don’t have all those other details, and God didn’t see any reason to give them to us in Genesis –
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: – in this section.
Colleen: Yeah. And we know that He put those skins on Adam and Eve, which meant they came off of an animal.
Nikki: Um-hmm. Yeah.
Colleen: He taught them to sacrifice.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And we know that Cain and Abel offered sacrifices, so we know that the concept of sacrifice had apparently come from God to man, but we don’t know any of the details and can’t speculate.
Nikki: Uh-uh.
Colleen: And I also think, once again, it’s so interesting that God has not told us the details of the primordial world. We know it existed, we know it was really bad, but He doesn’t tell us the details, and I think it’s for our safety.
Nikki: You know, I thought I was pretty special as an Adventist because I knew about pre-creation history –
Colleen: Oh, right!
Nikki: – and I knew how all this stuff fit together, and I have to say, as a Christian who really only believes that the Scripture is authoritative alone, I find a lot of peace in knowing I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t have to explain God to anyone.
Colleen: Yeah. That’s so well said, Nikki. I find the same peace. It’s like it’s just kind of rolled off my back. I don’t have to have a paradigm that I have to explain to everybody.
Nikki: Yeah. Yeah. When I first started coming around former Adventists, one of my favorite answers from them was, “Well, we really don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say.”
Colleen: Yeah. We can live with mystery, as our pastor says.
Nikki: Yeah. And in fact, it’s wise to.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: We know that Noah offered sacrifices, and then, verse 21, “The Lord smelled the soothing aroma.” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: You know, I’ve heard your husband, Nikki, say, “Yeah, God loves a good barbecue.” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Colleen: There’s a reason He said offer me the fat of your offering. [Laughter.] But the Lord smelled the soothing aroma and said, “I will never again curse the ground.” And then look what He says – this is after the flood, after He has wiped out everybody except those eight people on the ark – “For the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” What does that tell us?
Nikki: Man is still evil.
Colleen: Exactly. We are born depraved, and the flood didn’t stop that.
Nikki: Uh-uh.
Colleen: It wiped out the extent of the evil that they had gotten themselves into, but we’re still depraved. I didn’t understand that as an Adventist. I didn’t even believe that.
Nikki: I thought Noah was righteous because he built an ark and got on it. I thought that’s what made him a good person, but we see here this story is about God’s purposes.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: It’s not about Noah being obedient and righteous.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: I mean, certainly that was an important part of this –
Colleen: It was.
Nikki: – but it’s not what it’s about.
Colleen: No, it’s not. It’s about God preserving humanity, carrying out His purposes, and it does say that Noah found favor with God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But that was because he trusted God and did what He said.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: It wasn’t because he was inherently not depraved, or good, as we see after he comes off the ark and has that embarrassing time when he gets drunk in front of his sons.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So God knows the intent of man’s heart is evil, and God says here, “And I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done.” Now, Nikki, comment on verse 22, where God has this list. “As long as earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer, winter, day, and night shall not cease.” You had some really interesting reactions to that before the podcast.
Nikki: Yeah, well, you know, both of my kids go to public school.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: They have been hearing a lot about global warming and how we are going to just destroy the planet, and soon.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I have talked to them about our responsibility as God’s people to be good stewards, that that’s important.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: But you have to eliminate the fearmongering that comes from people who don’t know God and who don’t know His Word.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: God says He’s going to destroy the planet.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And He said He’s never going to do it with a flood.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And so this idea that we are going to melt the icecaps and flood the planet, it’s unbiblical.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: I see here that it says that while the earth remains, cold and heat will remain –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – summer and winter will remain. All of this will remain until God brings it to an end. God. Our holy, sovereign, powerful God, who has a plan.
Colleen: Who did it once before and will do it again. That’s a really interesting point. We can’t destroy ourselves by flooding the earth; we can’t destroy ourselves with global warming. Terrible things will happen.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They have for the history of the world since the flood. There are famines. There are localized floods. There are epidemics. These things will happen.
Nikki: And by saying that we are not powerful enough to do what God says He’ll never do, that doesn’t mean that we’re saying, “Don’t take care of the planet, don’t be responsible or a good steward of what God’s entrusted to us.”
Colleen: No!
Nikki: It’s kind of upsetting to me when – there’s been some pushback when I try to explain this to my kids –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and “Oh, you just don’t care about the planet.” No, no, we don’t get to do that. That’s not what I’m saying.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: But what I’m telling them is that God’s Word says they’re okay. He’s got this.
Colleen: He’s got this. Peter says in 2 Peter 3:3-6. This was a surprise to me when I learned it a couple of years ago. “Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.’ For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” He tells us exactly, from creation to the end, what will happen.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And the flood was God’s destruction of an evil civilization. And He’s preserving the world from ever destroying it with a flood again, but He will destroy it one more time, and that time by fire.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So I guess one of the things that the story of Noah has come to mean to me now is that God is sovereign, and I can’t just say, “Well, you know, He allowed some cataclysm to happen in the cosmos that caused a flood or whatever.” He sent it for judgment, and He is righteous, and He will judge, and His judgment is eternal, and we can’t undo that fact. It’s come to represent to me the fact that God keeps His word, He’s holy, and He will do what He will do.
Nikki: And He’s merciful.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I didn’t see His mercy really as a kid. I didn’t see His mercy in this story. I know Noah got to get on there, but he had to work hard to do it.
Colleen: Right. After Noah offered his sacrifices and God declared that as long as the earth remains there will be seasons, there will be night, there will be day, then we come to chapter 9, in which God makes His covenant, and this is such a cool covenant. Read along with us. Genesis 9:1-17.
Nikki: “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat the flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made him in His own image. And you, be fruitful and multiply, team on the earth and multiply in it.’ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.'”
Colleen: This is kind of interesting enough to me because it’s so different from the way I had actually understood it as an Adventist that I think it’s worth just walking through it verse by verse and just saying, “What do we see in each verse?”
Nikki: Yeah, let’s do it.
Colleen: So in the first one, “God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.'” What strikes you about that?
Nikki: Well, it’s sure similar to what He said to Adam.
Colleen: Yeah. Is there any difference?
Nikki: He does not tell them to subdue it.
Colleen: No, He doesn’t. But He does tell them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and have you ever thought of what it must have been like for them to have landed, you know, in Mt. Ararat, which is Turkey, in Turkey now, and to have a flood having covered the earth, the fountains of the deep having been broken, the rain having come down, the water having been on the earth for all those days and nights, and to come out of that ark, the earth would be different.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It would be completely different than it had been before. Eight people coming off the ark, and they’re to fill that earth. I mean, you think, “That’s a big job.”
Nikki: That’s overwhelming.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: And it would be so different from the earth that was there when they got on.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Talk about disorienting. But He tells them to be fruitful and to fill the earth. And then in verse 2, this is a really interesting verse. What does He say here?
Nikki: Well, He says that the fear of man is going to be in every beast of the earth and all the birds of the heaven, everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish. So even the animals are behaving differently now.
Colleen: Yes. Isn’t that interesting?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: There’s nothing to suggest that the animals prior to the flood had any fear of man. But at the very end of verse 2 and into verse 3, I think we might have an idea why God did this. What does it say there?
Nikki: “Into your hand they are delivered.”
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting. So He’s saying to Noah that the humans have authority over the animals.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They are not equal in value, as it were, before God. Now, clearly God values the animals. He saved animals in the ark.
Nikki: And they’re a part of the covenant.
Colleen: Yes. He’s making this covenant with them too. But He has a different rank for humans.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I know that one of the things that I have seen happen in my lifetime in just social agendas in our world is some kind of a movement that suggests that humans and animals are of equal value as life forms.
Nikki: Well, you know, I grew up hearing that humans were animals, we were one of the species of animals on the planet.
Colleen: That’s true. I learned that too. Biologically, that’s a fact. But spiritually we’re not the same, and I think the unbelieving world does not recognize that difference. Only man was made in God’s image.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So He’s clearly saying, even though the animals are now in a different kind of relationship, apparently, with man, man still has authority over them. But then in verse 3 we really find out the bottom line.
Nikki: He says, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.”
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting?
Nikki: That is, yeah.
Colleen: That’s everything.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Things that I wouldn’t even think of as food, like you know, whatever.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: But it’s interesting because it’s clear that prior to this, animals weren’t part of their food. This is something God is giving Noah after the flood. Now, did you ever see this verse as an Adventist?
Nikki: No. Actually, I don’t think I ever read this story out of a Bible as an Adventist.
Colleen: Oh, that’s interesting.
Nikki: I mean, maybe, when I – I tried reading through the Bible. I didn’t get very far, but no, I don’t remember this as an Adventist.
Colleen: I don’t either. I don’t remember seeing it. I am sure I read it at some point as an Adventist, but I did not see this verse.
Nikki: I did hear about it when I married my husband and I started learning about the health message. I didn’t really know – I mean, we were vegetarian in my Mom’s home, but I think it was more because we were grossed out by meat.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Yeah, I was told that God did give us meat, but it was to shorten our lifespan.
Colleen: Oh, interesting.
Nikki: And so the way around that is to avoid meat.
Colleen: Because the lifespan did shorten after the flood.
Nikki: Yeah, but it doesn’t say here in Scripture that it was because of this.
Colleen: No, not at all. Not at all. In fact, I just wonder if it isn’t partially because the earth was so different that God knew there were certain nutrients that we needed that would be hard to get.
Nikki: Yeah. Can I tell you, as a recovering vegetarian, vitamin B is tough to get without meat.
Colleen: Yes. And hasn’t it been a shock to have medical professionals tell you, you need animal protein?
Nikki: Yeah. My doctor almost scolded me, “Nikki, you need to eat animal flesh.” I wasn’t – yeah, anyway. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] That’s a different podcast, but wow.
Nikki: Yeah. It’s a different podcast, but it was incredible because I remember walking away from that thinking, “God designed for me to need things that are in animal flesh.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Like, I had to come to terms with that, and I had to start praying through it.
Colleen: Well, actually, that’s a good point because that seems to be one of the points of this whole movement, to say animals and people are of equal value. It seems to accompany a vegetarian agenda that’s out there in the public today, and it’s clear that God gave the animals for food.
Nikki: And He gave the animals for food to the animals.
Colleen: That too.
Nikki: He made the food chain anyway. That’s another podcast. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] That’s so interesting. And then there’s a guarded rule here in verse 4. What is it?
Nikki: You’re not supposed to eat flesh with its blood in it.
Colleen: You don’t just kill and eat a fresh animal with the blood not drained.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You don’t eat blood. And then He gives the conditions for what happens, and it actually is addressing not only not eating meat with the blood in it, but it’s also addressing taking life in general as murder. He’s not talking about killing for food, but He is addressing murder, and He is essentially saying, “Whoever sheds a man’s blood” – this is verse 6 – “by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.” And God is really making it clear that killing for the sake of killing is not allowed, and if someone does it, if someone kills another man, he will be killed for it, capital punishment for taking life. One other thing that I think is so interesting, and we didn’t mention it when we went past 2 and 3, but God gave the animals fear of man at the same time He gave the animals as food.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So it wouldn’t be easy to kill the animals. Man would have to work for his food.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And he was to understand that it was food, not sport. The animals had a fighting chance. Even in this, God is protecting and caring for the animals while He’s providing for man, which is so different from the God I understood as an Adventist.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: I just didn’t see that. So then He repeats, in verse 7 –
Nikki: “And you, be fruitful and multiply, team on the earth and multiply in it.”
Colleen: So He’s giving them a command to spread out and fill the planet, which is really very different from the message we’re getting today too, isn’t it?
Nikki: Yeah, it is.
Colleen: Overpopulation.
Nikki: Yep, yeah.
Colleen: Well, I’m not going to say we aren’t, like, crowded in certain places.
Nikki: Spread out people! [Laughter.]
Colleen: Yeah. [Laughter.] Spread out! There’s the message. [Laughter.]
Nikki: Okay. So just since we’re talking about population and murder, so much of our culture today you can see in these texts.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: You look at 6 and 7 together, and it really doesn’t allow any room for abortion.
Colleen: No, it doesn’t. That’s such a good point. Man is in the image of God, even the unborn. Then in 8 and 9, God speaks to Noah and his sons, and now He establishes the covenant. In 9, He starts out by articulating the first people that will be involved in having this covenant promised to them. Who does He say He’s making it with? Go ahead and just comment on 9 and 10.
Nikki: Well, it was to Noah and his sons.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And then to their offspring.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And then with every living creature.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Every living creature. And then He articulates it even further, the birds, the cattle, every beast of the earth. He’s even differentiating between domestic animals, like cattle, and wild animals, like the beasts.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This covenant is for everything that moves on the earth, which is amazing because He’s just given everything that moves for food, and yet He is making an overarching covenant of promise even to the animals. He is establishing this covenant, it says in 11, and He articulates again exactly what He’s doing. What does God say He will never do again?
Nikki: “Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
Colleen: It’s between 12 and 17, He explains the covenant and the sign of the covenant, and in 12, what does He say He is doing for a sign?
Nikki: He says, “The sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that’s with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” It’s the rainbow.
Colleen: It’s the rainbow, and it’s a sign of God’s care, protection, and promise to the entire planet and everything on it. I don’t even know how to talk about how significant that seems to me, and I never saw this in the past. He’s not just saying, “Okay, I’ve made a promise. Here’s my rainbow.” This is an eternal commitment, an eternal covenant from Almighty God to everything that moves and the earth that it will not be destroyed by flood ever again.
Nikki: And it’s not based on how they all behave.
Colleen: No. Not even a little bit because clearly evil runs amuck, animals kill each other, people are not behaving well all the time. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: But He is doing this, and it’s for all generations. And then in 13 and in 14 and 15, I think it’s so cool how God articulates this to Noah. He says again He’s going to set the bow in the clouds, and what does He say when the bow appears in the clouds?
Nikki: It says that He will remember His covenant.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: So whenever we’re outside driving along or standing in our yards and we see a rainbow, we can know that that’s not just us seeing a rainbow, that’s also God remembering He made this covenant with us, this overarching covenant. I was listening to a sermon on this passage by the late S. Lewis Johnson, and he made such an interesting point. He said he believes that God made this covenant, this eternal covenant that there would be stability, that there would be an earth that would not be destroyed until it’s eventually destroyed by fire, that He would keep His word so that humanity would know that life was stable, and as God successively revealed the way He would redeem us from our sin, we could know these things would come to pass and that they would be effective because He was keeping life on the earth, and it was a stable environment where all of His plans could be carried out. I thought that was a really interesting way to explain it.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s the foundational covenant for the human race today, that we’re stable because God’s sustaining us. It’s really pretty upsetting to me that there are people who have just taken the sign of the rainbow to apply to something that is not sustaining creation as God made it, but is actually saying, “There is no stable creation.”
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: “We are whatever we think we are. We can identify however we want to identify, and the rainbow is the symbol.” It just does not seem like an accident to me that they’ve taken the symbol of the stability and underlying faithfulness of God and applied it to something that is utterly movable.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: It’s not stable. It’s the opposite of stable.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it’s a travesty because this rainbow means something. In 16 and 17, God says, “‘When the bow is in the clouds, I will look upon it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth,’ and God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.'” Conditional or unconditional?
Nikki: Definitely unconditional.
Colleen: Isn’t that so awesome?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: When you see a rainbow outside, what do you think? Does it make you think –
Nikki: Oh, yeah.
Colleen: What does it make you think?
Nikki: Oh, I just think about the faithfulness of God. I don’t know, I guess this sounds really silly, but it makes me – I don’t know, it’s a feeling word.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: But I feel closer to Him somehow, like there’s – I don’t know.
Colleen: I know. I feel the same. I do. And sometimes I see His rainbow in a cloud, and sometimes I’ve seen them when we’ve been facing things that have a lot of unknowns.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I’ll see a rainbow, and it’s like – it doesn’t assure me everything will be okay in the physical sense, but it assures me that He’s with us, He sees me, and His purposes will not be thwarted even in my life. It’s just a wonderful thing. Now, because we were Adventists and because of the way we were taught Genesis, I want to also mention that the next thing – this is Genesis 9, where we have the covenant – the next thing after the covenant, we have just a brief mention, this little episode with Noah planting a vineyard and getting drunk. But we do meet his three sons by name. We have Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and I don’t want to camp on them a lot, but I do want to make the point that God makes promises to them. He says in 9:26, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant.” The main thing I want to say about this is, these three people became the fathers of the human race that refilled the earth after the flood, and Shem became the father of the Semites, and this is really important because God is preserving the Holy Seed that He promised to Eve. And remember when Eve had Cain, he was a disappointment; he wasn’t the answer.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Poor Abel died. And then when she had Seth, she said that the Lord had granted her a son. And it also says when Seth was born all the people began to call on the name of the Lord in Seth’s lifetime. There is a Holy Seed through Seth that is continuing on, and Shem is the one that God had chosen to be the father of the Semites, which includes the Jews, all the sons of Abraham. And this is really significant at this point because this is Genesis 9; in Genesis 12 we meet Abraham, where the next phase of God’s promises will be revealed and start to play out in humanity. So the Holy Seed is being preserved, and in this new world, God is still working towards His eternal purposes, and it’s going to be carried out through the sons of Shem. It’s just interesting. And then the other thing that happens before we meet Abraham is Babel; right?
Nikki: Babel. Yeah. We call it Bābel. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Because we were Adventist. [Laughter.]
Nikki: Yeah, Ad-‘vent-ist. [Laughter.]
Colleen: That’s right. [Laughter.] So what shocked you in our women’s Bible study when we were studying the Old Testament?
Nikki: All the Christians around me called it Băbel.
Colleen: Yes! In fact, if I say Bābel, they look at me funny. [Laughter.]
Nikki: Yeah. [Laughter.] Yeah, and I, for the life of me, couldn’t understand it because it reads Bābel.
Colleen: There’s a single consonant there between two vowels. [Laughter.]
Nikki: Yeah. And everyone who used to live around me called it Bābel.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: But yeah, I remember one of the ladies saying, “Yeah, but this is where Babylon was, so this is Băbel.”
Colleen: Well, and she’s right about that. That’s where Bābel, the Tower of Bābel/Băbel was built is where Babylon –
Nikki: I never connected Babylon with Babel as an Adventist.
Colleen: I didn’t either. And yet Babylonian religion stemmed from there. It was all connected.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: One thing I just think we need to mention, because it’s not part of the Abrahamic covenant, and it’s more connected to what happened after Noah, the Tower of Bābel, because I can’t stop calling it that –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: The Tower of Babel was really significant for a couple of reasons. What had been the center command of God to Noah after the flood?
Nikki: To go and multiply on the earth.
Colleen: And fill it.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: And what did the people on the plain of Shinar say to one another? They didn’t want to go out and fill the earth; they wanted to stick together. And they said, “Let’s build a tower and make a name for ourselves.”
Nikki: So I have a question about that.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Was it Ellen who said they built a tower so they could escape another flood?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: The Bible doesn’t say that.
Nikki: That’s really funny.
Colleen: It is funny, isn’t it?
Nikki: Yeah, it kind of makes me think of them all being vegetarian so they can escape the shorter lifespan. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: Just sayin’. [Laughter.]
Colleen: That is funny.
Nikki: Sorry.
Colleen: So, no, it’s actually a really good point. So the people in Babel are building a tower to make a name for themselves. They are hoping to exalt themselves on the earth. They are not moving out and filling, they are making a city. God is not happy. And it’s really quite interesting, in chapter 11 of Genesis God says, “Behold” – this is verse 6, well actually verse 5. “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.” So it’s both, a city and a tower. “And the Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us'” – capital “Us,” there’s a plurality suggested in God there, presaging the Trinity, which isn’t articulated but is always there. “‘Let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.” So two things are going on here. One is in verse 6 when God says, “This is what they’ve purposed to do, and nothing will be impossible for them.” Well, you think from a human perspective what all that could suggest. I mean, remembering that God has just a few short years before destroyed the whole earth for evil run amuck, and here they are again, and He’s essentially saying, “This will happen again.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And to say that “nothing will be impossible for them,” I don’t even begin to know what that could mean, but it probably means anything a human mind can think, they will be able to come up with because they are not obeying God. And just like the people before the flood, evil, which included temptations by and fraternizing with evil, that would happen again. The solution is what?
Nikki: To disperse them.
Colleen: To disperse them and to change their languages.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So think about it, before the flood people were living hundreds and hundreds of years. Lifespan was hundreds of years. Methuselah, Adam, over 900 years. After the flood, God shortened their lifespan. He specifically said He would shorten it. He limited the time they could conspire together. So if you started a technological project or a social engineering project or any kind of a project in collaboration with other people who were equally self-centered, narcissistic, power hungry as you, and you had, like, unlimited hundreds of years to work together, you could probably accomplish a lot. And God limited their lifespan, and He also messed up their languages so they could suddenly no longer conspire. So let’s suppose that somebody had a tremendous brain for chemistry and somebody else for engineering, and they’re working together on some biochemical thing, and suddenly they can’t communicate, and one language has the secret of one specialty, and another language has the secret of another, and then they get protective because they have their identities identified by their languages, and they have to move away from each other, and they can no longer conspire. God really did limit the amount of damage they could do. He limited the evil they could accomplish, but really amazingly, He had them fill the earth, which they had refused to do. “Fill the earth.” “No, we’ll build a city.” “Okay, you’re going out my way.”
Nikki: Yeah. This is a sovereign God.
Colleen: Yes. What is the long-term answer to Babel?
Nikki: Well, it was Pentecost.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? What happened at Pentecost?
Nikki: He gave them all one language.
Colleen: He gave them the ability to understand each other’s languages, for sure. He had Peter preaching in Acts 2, and all of those people, all those Jews were in town for the Passover and for the Feast of Pentecost. They all heard the gospel in their own tongues, from all over the Roman Empire. He gave the gift of tongues. He gave the gift of being able to speak the gospel so other people could hear it, even if you didn’t know their language. He undid the curse of Babel through giving the Holy Spirit.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s an amazing thing. At Babel, God cursed disobedient man. At Pentecost, God reversed that curse for those who trusted Him. It’s just an amazing bookend to this whole thing.
Nikki: Um-hmm. It’s interesting, in verse 4, they actually – their reason for doing this was –
Colleen: You mean Babel, the tower.
Nikki: For building the tower, yeah. The whole purpose for that was to avoid obeying God’s command in 9:7. He says, “Be fruitful and multiply and team on the earth,” and in verse 11:4 they said, “Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
Colleen: Wow.
Nikki: They were conspiring to do the exact opposite of what they had been commanded to do.
Colleen: That is so interesting. It was flagrant disobedience.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: As it had been in the Garden of Eden and as it had been over the whole earth before the flood. And it’s also interesting that God stepped in and judged this disobedient people, but in a way that was different from destroying life and starting over.
Nikki: Yeah, it was very merciful.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Makes me think of the parents who instead of beating their child for disobedience, they will pick them up and remove them from what they’re doing, and it was a very merciful way for God to prevent us from being able to fully rebel against Him.
Colleen: Exactly. And at the same time accomplish His purpose of filling the earth and increasing society and culture.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Civilization. He made it possible. And it was He that determined there would be nations, not just one glob of people.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Colleen: The nations are His plan. In three short chapters – well, actually, we’ll start with 8:4; 8, 9, 10, and 11, we have seen the flood, we have seen God bringing Noah and his sons through the flood, seen them offering sacrifices to God, God making a covenant with them and with the whole earth, and we’ve seen what happened down the road as people refused to obey His command to fill the earth. We’ve seen God’s curse on humanity for not obeying Him, but at the same time His blessing in that curse, which dispersed the people throughout the world. He made nations, and He provided for society to flourish by spreading them out. And they couldn’t destroy themselves with their collaboration quite as easily when they couldn’t speak to each other. So in the big picture, what’s your reaction, Nikki, when you think about God’s first actual named covenant being the rainbow after the flood? What does that make you see now?
Nikki: Well, now I see my sovereign God, who is in control of history, who has always had a plan, and we have notbeen able to thwart that plan.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And I feel very secure, very safe, very cared for. I see God now; I don’t see myself. I don’t see me trying to figure out how to get on that boat.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: I see a God who has a plan and a plan for those who are His.
Colleen: It’s an amazing shift in perspective. Now, when I see a rainbow, I almost feel emotional because I know that God is seeing it, and I am seeing it, and He’s keeping His promises to all of us, and I can rest because I know I’m safe. And just by the way, one last thing about this ark and this flood, I am safe because of Jesus. Noah was a type of Christ, and the ark is a type of salvation, and God appointed Noah to build that ark as a foreshadowing of Jesus, who would bring salvation to all of us who believe in Him. And because of that, I know I’m safe, and the rainbow assures me that everything around me is being held together as well. If you haven’t trusted Jesus, we invite you to do that. We invite you to know that because of His death, His burial, and His resurrection, He has taken care of everything necessary to reconcile us to God, to bring us to new life, and we can be safe in Him, as Noah and his sons were safe in that ark. If you have questions or comments, we invite you to write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. If you would like to subscribe to Proclamation! or to our weekly email, write to proclamationmagazine.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and write a review for the podcast on iTunes if you’d care to. Thanks for traveling this journey with us, and we look forward to talking to you again next week.
Nikki: See you next time.
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