hanger #4

I want to continue on with the story of the hanger of love and how the law and prophets are beginning to be hung on it through Noah’s life. If you remember we left off in chapter 9 of Genesis. Starting with verse one, we read: So God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. In this verse we have a repetition of one of the original commands of Love. Notice that this is a command for both believers and unbelievers because scripture seems to indicate that only Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and yet we see that the covenant is given to his whole family. We know for certain that his son Ham is a lover of death and he is given this command. I want to be clear: no one is exempt from the love mandate. Even though the original love relationship has been broken; the requirements are still in effect. Life and death are still determined by the obedience of love.

From that we can begin to understand that all humans are still responsible to love God and to walk in the commands of love. If a person does not come to repentance then the passage of time only increases the wages of not loving which is death. Turning your back on love doesn’t eliminate love as being the path of life. It only ensures that you will receive the wages of hating. The only hope is to humble yourself before God and in doing so trust, through faith (demonstrated by obedience to the word of love), in the promise of God for justice to be paid out so that mercy can be applied.

What we see in the verses that follow is that because of the fall there have been some changes in the commands of love. Ideas still have consequences. Rebellion against love brought about changes in nature. Nature is no longer normal. It has been damaged. We now live in an abnormal world. But like so many dysfunctional people we’ve been living this way so long we no longer know what functional is. That is why we need the book of love: It is the path that will lead us back to normalcy. Without it we have no hope of recovery because the inmates have taken over the asylum.

So back when the world was normal, before we mutinied, Adam was told to be a vegetarian. But Noah is told that it is alright to eat anything that is alive. Even though some animals are considered unclean (as we see when it says that Noah sacrificed clean animals and in the differentiation of clean and unclean animals to be loaded on the ark) they are not yet unclean enough to not be eaten.
What we can learn from this is that the full consequences of our actions can take a long time to unfold. 1500 years after the fall the damage is still unfolding. In another 500 to 1000 years some animals will be inedible according to the rule of love and the path of life. But at this point they are not – anything that is alive can be eaten.

As we read on we notice that other things have changed as well. Verse two tells us that "The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. Fear is the difference in our relationship with animals. Until the flood animals were not afraid of humans. Noah just went out and got the animals and put them on the ark. He might have been able to just ask them to come and they came. But after they left the ark God gave them fear. Given the tendency of mankind to love death they certainly have plenty of reason to fear.

In verse three we read: Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. So we see the command to eat plants is still in effect but something has changed between the fall and the flood. I believe that one of the things that happened may have been a climate change that caused plants to not be as prolific as they once were. I certainly have no problem with being a vegetarian but without the blessings of farming technology that we have today it would be impossible in our day and age because food grows very slowly.
Before the flood several hundred million people were vegetarians without any advanced technology. That changed in a matter of 40 days. I believe Love gave us permission to eat meat so that we could survive in the post flood world.

Though we are allowed to eat any meat we want at this point Love tells us that if we want to walk on the path of life that we should not eat blood. Verse 4 says: Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. This commandment carries on into our day and age being reaffirmed by the apostles in Acts chapter 15 verse 20 where we are told to abstain from blood. This brick on the path of life has been so incorporated into our lives in our culture that we don’t even think about it. We hang our meat after it is slaughtered. We drain the blood. Oh that the rest of the bricks in the path of life were so easy to walk on without thinking. Thank God someday they will be.

In verse 5 we read: Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man's brother I will require the life of man. 6"Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man. Here is one of the most hated requirements of love. God is saying here that if you truly love then if an animal kills a person the animal must die. If a man murders a man the murderer, even if it is his brother, must die. Here is the commandment not to murder and the command for the atonement of that murder through the death of the one who caused blood to be shed.

In our day and age this is one of the places where the rubber hits the road. This is where people begin to scoff at love’s ways being love. They would say: That can’t be love. That’s just mean. We have to decide: is God really love? Are all of God’s way’s love? That’s important because if God is love and all of the law and the prophets hang on loving God and mankind and something is hanging there that isn’t love then God is a liar or this thing we call his word isn’t his word.

A lot of people in the church have said one or the other. My God would never say that. Or they would say those words not the word of God. God doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Of course they’re more subtle than that they say things like:: the bible really isn’t all the word of God or the things in that book are just primitive man’s interpretation of what God was revealing. We’re too sophisticated to be primitives like that. My God would never do such a thing. That’s barbaric.” But all of those things are code words for: Love doesn’t know what love is.

The passage, however, tells us that if we are going to walk in the path of life, if we are going to love our creator, love the victim of the crime AND love the perpetrator of the crime then civil justice needs to be done. This is love not because we like it but because it is what love reveals about himself and his ways.

Don’t think for a minute that doing love is easy. If it was easy we’d do it. Dying is easy; just look around at the world we live in and you can see just how easy dying is. We live in a world where death is natural, death is the norm. Our call as believers is to be above the norm. We are called to do the hard task of living and turning the rest of the world from death to life whether they want to live or not.

Love continues on saying mean and nasty things in verse 7: As for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it. If you half pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us you will know that for many people this is the reason the world is in the mess it is in. Obey this act of love and you will be despised by the lovers of death. To them populating the earth is our biggest sin against the planet. So to atone for our sin of loving we must murder our children before they are even born. We must stop taking dominion over the planet and let the world be restored to an untamed wilderness. We should destroy the human race because we are destroying the planet.

Here is another choice we have to make: Who is really telling the truth? Who is really loving people and the planet? God says populate the earth. God says take dominion over the planet. The seasons will not end as long as the earth exists. Life will go on. The lovers of death say you are killing the planet so kill yourselves. Who should we believe? That is the question of our age. I think right now love is losing that battle even though he will eventually win the war.

God continues to speak to Noah and his sons in verse 9: Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you; 10and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth.

Stop there. God is concerned about all of his creation. He didn’t just make a new relationship of love with us he also covenanted with the rest of creation. Every living creature is in a covenant relationship with God. It’s not the same covenant that we have because the rest of creation has not rebelled and is not sin like we are but it was and is cursed because of us. I would just about guarantee you that their covenant is something like this: I will restore you to your former glory.

In the book of Romans chapter 8 we read: 19For with anxious longing creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. 20For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

I believe we have let humanist science tell us lies. What’s new right? I believe that the animals, the plants, even the rocks and trees commune with God in their own way. They are God’s creation and they are not in rebellion against him. They cry out: “How long, O God, dear sweet Love? How long are we going to have to suffer for the humans’ rebellion? Please restore us.” I think we are going to be totally and ashamedly amazed at the damage we have done to this planet not because of pollution or over population but because we rejected the path of life and turned our backs on love. May God hasten the day when the world is no longer abnormal.

God establishes this covenant, this love relationship with all of creation and says “all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth." Notice it doesn’t say that there won’t be floods or that people and animals won’t be killed by floods but rather the whole earth will never be destroyed by single all-encompassing flood ever again.

Love continues on saying: This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; 13I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, 15and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." 17And 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."

Love has established the path of life and love for all the creatures on the planet. Every time that you see a rainbow don’t think about how light refracts into various colors when it shines through water: Think of the fact that Love promised to provide the justice necessary for us to receive mercy and grace. Love has promised redemption, adoption, and restoration to any who will humble themselves and walk on the path of life. The choice is yours life or death, love or hate. Love has clearly laid out the path of life; walk on it and hear well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.

What have we learned about love from this section of the love manual? Love means filling the earth and populating it. All humans are expected to walk in love even though they have rejected love as their father and put themselves under Satan and pant after death. Life and death are still determined by obedience to the ways of love. You are free to do what you want to do BUT there will be consequences: death for leaving the path of love; life for staying on it. The unhumble will only increase their wages of death because all they do is in rebellion against God. The world is abnormal because the human race has left the path of life and rejected Love therefore God gave us what we wanted by letting us pant after death. The consequences of rebellion against love have damaged the planet. Animals now fear humans. Plants and vegetables are not as abundant as they used to be so now God has permitted the eating of every kind of meat. Some meat at the time of Noah was unclean but still edible. Love tells us that if we want to love life then we should not eat blood. Love tells us that any animal that kills a human must be put to death if WE want to stay on the path of love and life. Love tells us that any human who murders another human must be put to death if we want to stay on the path of love. Love tells us that if we are to love both the victim and the perpetrator then civil justice must be done according to the ways of love. Love has not just entered into a relationship with humans; all of creation is in a covenant with love.

Any questions?

Let’s pray. Oh father, be our God. Change our hearts cause us to hunger and thirst after you and your ways, teach us to truly love you. In Jesus’ power and authority I ask these things. Amen.