Amen. As you're being seated, you can turn to Genesis 9. I want to ask you a question this morning. I don't ever leave there, but I'm going to for a second. Is this book I hold in my hands, is this a boring book? I would say definitely not, right? It's not boring. Now, you may not like reading. You may think reading is boring. You might think studying is boring. You might think some Bible studies or sermons are boring, hopefully not the ones here. But in this room, I think we would all agree, this book is not boring. I mean, just think about what all is contained in this book. It tells us everything we need to know about God. That's a simple statement for us, but think about what that means. If there is a God, and we say there is, then we want to know him, should not we go to the source that's going to tell us all we can know about him? Of course, right? Not only does it tell us all we need to know about God, it tells us all we need to know about ourselves, about mankind. And it tells us so many things that even if you're not a Christian, can help guide your life, honestly. I mean, the book has affected education and law and government and so many different areas of life. And it's interesting. Aren't there just crazy stories in the Bible? For us guys, there's stories of fighting and wars and battles and strong men and mighty men and just like things that if made into a legit movie, right, would be a blockbuster movie. Just cool stories. For the ladies, some of the greatest love stories ever are found in the Bible. Or for romantic guys, too. But so many different, there's suspenseful moments, there's thrilling moments, there's mysterious moments. So many things in this book, this book is not boring. More than all that, what we know is that the Bible tells us we can know God through Christ, which is the greatest thing it tells us, right? And so I just wanted to kind of drive this point home that the Bible is our truth, right? That's why, by the way, I like this pulpit. It's not to lift up the preacher, it's to lift up the word. And so I know with Front Row, Nick and them, I know they probably have cricks in their neck, but the idea, no matter who's up here in the pulpit, the idea is that the word is exalted. And that we say we believe this. Do we understand it all? No. Are we trying to? Yes. This book contains lessons from the past. that help us in our present and will guide us in our future. And so we're going to continue week after week to dive into this book, and I'm encouraging all of us, don't let this be the only time you dive into it, right? Day by day, this should be our daily bread. But I want you to see it's not boring, and today, in the aftermath of the flood that we studied last week in Genesis, We're going to see a couple of very interesting topics, some interesting topics, some different topics. And again, just to kind of prove my point that the Bible is not boring and that the Bible speaks to all types of things, we're going to see, again, some interesting things after the flood. So if you'll find Genesis 9, we're going to start just by reading the first four verses here. And listen what happens after the flood. If you found Genesis 9-1, let me know by saying word. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth and upon all the fishes of the sea. Into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat? So, here's the interesting part and I'm going to give you four parts in Genesis 9. The first part is this thing about Christians or Noah and his family eating meat with blood in it. Kind of interesting. The first thing about this I've noticed is this is the first time in scripture where we see people actually eating meat. Now some say they still ate meat before the flood. It doesn't tell us that but this is the first example and we know Jesus ate meat, right? He ate fish. I count as meat. So after the flood God says you're going to take these animals and you're going to use them for food, but then he gives this stipulation, right? Don't eat it with blood in it. And I want to dive into that in a moment, but I was thinking about this and in Leviticus chapter 11, I'm not sure if I put that up there for you or not, but in Leviticus 11 there are these dietary restrictions that God gives the people of Israel. They're very interesting, and you've heard of some of these, and some of these, of course, many Jewish people still follow to this day. And I'm not going to read Leviticus 11 to you, but it just gives all these dietary laws. For us, we're like, what is this, right? It might seem like a boring list to you, but there's a purpose, right? And the purpose is when, and this is for a lot of things in the Old Testament, that God was forming a people. And the people he was forming, the people of Israel, he wanted them to be distinct from the nations around them. And one way God made his people distinct or different was, of course, by his laws, including some of these dietary restrictions. And so that kind of stayed a part of their nation, their people, even over into the New Testament. So much so that as some of you know, who study the New Testament, that it became a real issue in the church, right, between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers. When people might try to force the Gentile believers to follow some of these Old Testament dietary restrictions. And so what I'm about to share with you is not just about food and blood and meat and dietary restrictions. I think I'm going to share with you this filter of how we should understand the scriptures. And this can help you in so many different Old Testament studies. Notice this filter. As we filter the Bible through a covenant story, first we have the Old Covenant, which is Israel and the law. That is what we see in our Old Testament study. God forms his people, right? Abraham has Isaac, Isaac has Jacob, Jacob's name is turned to Israel, and his descendants are this people that God has created. And so this is the Old Testament. He gives them a law, and they are to obey that law. We know the Ten Commandments famously, but we know there are hundreds of other laws that God gave them. And they follow these laws. But what happens is, through this line, as I showed you here, and through Moses and the law, we eventually come to the New Testament, or the New Covenant, which is Christ and grace. So, are we believers, here's the question, to follow all the Old Testament laws that God gave? Pretty good question, right? Like there's some about how you should trim your beard, which I probably failed at that one. There's some about wearing garments of two different types of garment in the same clothing. There's so many just things and restrictions and commandments. Here's how I like to think about them. First, some are repeated in the New Testament. Like for example, thou shalt not kill. That's a basic one, right? And it's repeated in the New Testament. Thou shalt not commit adultery, repeated in the New Testament. And others, honor your father and mother is in the Old Testament and again repeated in the New Testament. But the best example of this to me is when Jesus summarized, as Jesus is asked, what's the greatest commandment? What commandment should we keep? And he summarized it and said, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. So Jesus summarizes these Old Testament laws and he says, In a sense, as Christ came, in a sense, listen, he says, I'm fulfilling those laws. So watch this. We don't keep all those laws in the sense maybe that they did, but we keep them in the sense that Christ kept them and we're in Christ. Does that make sense? But as far as practically every day, those certain rules do not apply to us. We follow God's law and we follow Christ's main command, love God, love others. And in doing so, we are by faith right with God, just by our faith. But this is interesting to me because about six years ago, it was after church on a Sunday, probably two o'clock, I was sitting in my recliner. I don't know if I was watching a NASCAR race or a football game, I can't remember. I get a phone call from a friend of mine who had, we had not really ever talked on the phone. His name was Jim. And I said, hello, and Jim's like, I gotta ask you a question about church. I was like, okay, that's cool. Jim, by the way, is a little older than me, a deacon at his church, a lifelong church guy, been in church his whole life, was probably, you know, in church the first week after his birth, I'm sure. Jim said, this morning, my pastor preached a sermon and said, we should no longer eat meat with blood in it. He said, we should only eat steak, well done. And I was like, boo, terrible idea, horrible idea. And I said, well, tell me more. So he explained that his pastor came to the Old Testament, like I have this morning, and some other passages. And he said he really stayed on that topic for the whole sermon. And let me give you my response to Jim. And it's my response for us to Genesis 9 and verse 4. You remember in Acts chapter 10, Peter has this vision. God gives Peter this vision, and it's meant to show Peter that salvation is not just for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles. But in that vision, in Acts 10, 9 through 16, God declares to Peter that all foods are clean, thus showing that this Old Testament law has been fulfilled in Christ and doesn't apply in the same way. Then I pointed him to Romans 14. So Acts 10 and Romans 14, have it here for you. One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not. And the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Here's what I'm trying to summarize for us. You know, we can go into more, there's more verses, more scriptures, but in the new covenant, The covenant of grace, the Bible is much more concerned with how much food we eat than what food we eat. Would you agree? The new covenant, I can eat a medium rare steak, which is what I do. And the Bible is more concerned with our trusting Christ and obeying Christ and treating people well and being an active part of the church. The Bible is much more concerned with that than the foods we eat. So there's some application for us. There's a few other reasons why, by the way, that I think God put this in Genesis 9, 4. First, unhealthy meat. God's laws were practical. A lot of these laws that God puts in the Old Testament, if you go back and look at those things, even like circumcision and other laws like this and things God put in place had health benefits and were practical for their use in their day. Even now, right, we have warnings on our food that says do not consume undercooked meat, right? And so, those are obviously practical. God did not want his people out there just being savages, right? Another thing is the fact that blood is a symbol of life throughout scripture, right? We think about, we talk about the blood of Christ, and even in this passage, he mentions the blood as life. And so, in Christ, the food laws are obsolete or fulfilled through him. But again, I thought that was interesting. Again, some say, the Bible's boring. Well, I think that's kind of interesting. Should we eat this kind of food? And I'm saying from Scripture, you can eat this kind of food. You can eat meat with blood in it if you prefer. Or if you don't, if you don't feel well done, go ahead. I don't recommend it. Alright, second point. Another interesting thing the Bible tells us about, and I've had this conversation three or four times in the past six months with different people about the death penalty. I don't know why, it's just randomly come up in conversations I guess, but look at verses five and six. He says, and surely your blood of your lives will I require, at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man. So focus on 9-6 here, and this basic principle, this basic truth that God lays out, that again has shaped not just the church, but has shaped human history and governing and nations over the years, sometimes. First, we see that man is made in God's image. 9-6 repeats what we saw back in the early parts of Genesis, that man is made in God's image. Therefore, man has value, right, in the sense of made in God's image. The second thing is, murder happens early on in human history, right? We saw in Genesis 4, Cain killed Abel. We saw in Genesis 4, Lamech commits murder. In Genesis 6, it doesn't say specifically murder, but it speaks about the wickedness of the earth at that time. And so we can say, maybe, possibly there were more murders, we don't know. And so he says here in chapter 9 verse 6, If you kill someone else, you'll be killed back. And I was thinking, what in the Old Testament would get someone the death penalty, for example? There's a bunch. I've listed just a few here, and you can look these up. In the Old Testament, death was commanded for these groups. Murder, kidnapping, adultery, homosexuality, being a false prophet, and others that I won't even list on there. Some very interesting, but I didn't put them on the list. And I'm like, wow, did God strike down everybody or did God allow everybody to be killed if they committed these crimes or these sins? And I think you know the answer to that, right? He did not. God often showed mercy even when the death penalty was due because he's a merciful God. Go back to the previous list there for a second, Kendall. Even the first one on this list and the third one, one of the heroes of our faith committed both those, didn't he? David, King David, saw Bathsheba bathing, brought her in, committed adultery, then ends up having her husband killed, committed two of these things. And he had consequences to his actions, to his sins, but he was not, he didn't get the death penalty, right? God did not strike him down. God showed mercy. I was thinking on this topic, Don't we all deserve the death penalty for sin? Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is death. Sin earns us death. So really every sin we commit should result in the death penalty. And by the way, it did. It's just Christ died the death for us. There's the gospel. Some people use this, I found this interesting this week as I was diving into this topic. Some people take, in John 8, when Jesus says, if any of you is without sin, let it be the first to cast a stone. And they say that is Jesus doing away with any ideas of capital punishment. I don't see that there in John 8. I see Jesus just making another point, a different point about their hypocrisy, the Pharisees' hypocrisy. So if you believe that Genesis 9-6 is God instituting capital punishment, then how should Christians view this topic? First, here's how we should think about it, that God instituted it. It's in Genesis 9-6. It's in other parts of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, I'm going to show you in a moment how it's also mentioned in the New Testament. God instituted it. Secondly, we should not take delight in death. We shouldn't be braggadocious, I guess, about the idea that, you know, if you do something bad, you're gonna be struck down. There was a, I heard this years ago, I think it was a comedian, and he said, a lot of states are abolishing the death penalty. He said, our state's putting in an express lane for the death penalty. He was bragging about how much his state used it. He was trying to be funny. But we know that God has set it up so that And he says this in the Old Testament, only severe crimes lead to that and there had to be certain types of witnesses and things like that in place as well. Third, and this is I think most importantly for us, God has given the government, given government the authority to determine its use. God has not said this is something we take into our own hands. And I think that's true in Romans 13 and verse 4. It says, for he is God's servant for your good, but if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. I think that phrase there to mean, he's talking about the government there, the leadership, the government, bearing the sword as in, I believe that's talking about capital punishment. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. So again, a very interesting topic. Like I said, I've had this conversation and I've had this conversation recently with two Christians in the room. One Christian said, I think we need more death penalty. Another Christian in the same conversation said, I don't think we should have any death penalty. And so very interesting conversations to have, but we want to see what God's word says about it. And I've showed you what I think here in the scripture. Let's go to part three. The middle section of this chapter is about the Noahic Covenant. We actually covered this in last week's sermon, but to summarize quickly, after the flood, God promised Noah, the one he had saved through the flood, I will not flood the earth again. I will not destroy the earth again with a flood. And then God gave a sign, right, a sign of the covenant, which was what? A rainbow in the sky to remind Noah, to remind his family, and to remind us of God's promises and God's promise that he will never destroy the earth again. And that leads me to my fourth point and my final part. What happened with Noah and Ham? Another very interesting portion of scripture. So find verse 18 with me of chapter nine. And as I read this, let's listen and see what happened here. And the sons of Noah that went forth of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth. And Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah, and of them was the whole earth overspread." By the way, next week we'll talk more about these three sons of Noah and their spreading through the earth. Verse 20, and Noah began to be a husbandman, or a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. And he drank of the wine and was drunken, and he was uncovered within his tent. and Ham the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father and their faces were backward and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood 350 years. And all the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. So, what happened right after the flood? Those first few things I talked about were just kind of some side notes, really, and then now we have the Noahic Covenant, and now Noah plants a vineyard, he begins to partake of his wine, and gets drunk. And this is the first mention, by the way, of being drunk in the scriptures. The first mention of drunkenness here in Genesis chapter 9, and I don't think I put the scriptures up there, but maybe I did. But we look at Noah's fault in this story, which was his drunkenness, and we have scriptures here that tell us, right, that it is wrong, it is a sin to be drunk with wine. Proverbs 20 tells us that. Proverbs 23, there are many scriptures that tell us this. Ephesians 5 says, do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. In other words, don't let substances control your life, but let the Spirit of God be the controller of the guidance of your life. And that's a very important thing. I know many of us in this room, whether it's personally or in your family, has had lives destroyed by, you know, drug use, alcohol use, and things of that nature. And so I'll just point that out, that God calls us to let the Spirit be our guide, not other things in this world. So Noah, that's Noah's fault, and I've heard this preached before where they just kind of hammer Noah, but I think the text really speaks more about Ham and what Ham did. So look at Ham's fault. He walks in, he sees his father uncovered, naked, in this drunken state. And instead of just covering his father or doing the right thing, he sees it and he goes out and tells his brothers. And the best I can understand this, it seemed as though he was doing it in some kind of mocking manner. Some say that the Hebrew here means he told it with great delight. Almost like he went out and said, guys, you gotta see what happened, you gotta see what's going on here. Not in a way that would be respectful to his father, but in a way that would be mocking of his father. And we know that in whatever way, whatever it was, we know he was wrong, because verse 24 says, Noah woke up and knew his younger son had done something to him, and then he placed a curse. Now notice in verse 24, Ham, the son of Noah, had done something wrong, but who does Noah curse? Is it Ham? It's not, is it? Cursed be Canaan. He curses Ham's son. And twice before this, the Bible was clear to let us know back in verse 18 and again in verse 22 that Ham was the father of Canaan. So now we get to 25, and he says, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. And so he places this curse on Canaan. I remember, I wonder if anybody else ever heard this. Years ago, I heard a preacher, well first, I forgot to mention this, some believe Canaan was there with Ham, and was a part of it, and that's why he was cursed. I'm not sure but I want to talk about this crazy theory. Have you ever heard this before? I heard a pastor preach this from a pulpit that Canaan became the father of the Africans and the curse that Noah did in Genesis 9 led to slavery and preached that as a sermon. And I was like, that's weird. Is that true? I don't think that's true. We may talk about that next week in chapter 10. If you follow the lineage, I don't think that's true. There's some crazy theories out there. The Bible is not boring. Noah gives these curses. Curses Canaan. And by the way, Canaan will later become the people that the Israelites go into the promised land and conquer. We'll see that next week, or we'll at least mention it. He gives Japheth a blessing in verse 27 and says that Canaan shall be his servant as well. We'll talk more about Japheth next week. But look right in the middle of verse 26. Right in the middle of verse 26 he says, blessed be the Lord God of Shem. Do you know who's in the line of Shem? That's the line that's going to produce Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. That's the line that's going to eventually produce Christ. I love that phrase, blessed be the Lord God of Shem. Again, you might think next week's sermon, Genesis 10, was mainly just, it's gonna be a list of names. You might think, that's gonna be a boring one. but to see that God has given us detailed lists of descendants to show us that the things God said come true and that the Savior comes through this line of people. The Bible is not boring. It's interesting. So as we conclude chapter nine, it tells us that Noah dies at 950 years old. We know Noah as a man of faith. We know Noah as a man who was saved through the flood and who helped replenish the earth. So, that's the end of an era, right? After Noah dies, I consider that the end of an era. So what will happen now? Will Shem, Ham, and Japheth, as they multiply and replenish the earth, we'll see that in chapter 10, will mankind remember God's mercy to them in the flood? And will they turn to God in a great revival? What do y'all think? Will they? I think y'all probably know what Genesis 11 is. As God gives mankind a second chance, if you will, will they take advantage of it or will they fall back into sinful ways? We'll talk about that in the next couple of weeks. So back to my opening question. Is the Bible boring? No. Some sermons might be boring. Some Bible studies might be boring. Some chapters might feel boring as you try to go through them. Some books, Leviticus, might seem boring at times. But as a whole, this book is not boring, is it? Not only is it not boring, it is the word of life. If you don't know God through Christ, this book gives you the way. It is the word of life, not only for salvation, but for living. If you're struggling with life, health, marriage, family, job, sin, whatever, there's something in the word that can help you walk through that path. So I wanted to just drive that point home with us today. Because we do understand, right, that most people in the world think this is nonsense. Most people in the world think this is just some old book. Most people in the world, most people could care less about what it says. But what we know is many people have died so that we could have this book. And so we hold firmly to the word of life. Let's pray.