After the Flood

Sexta/Viernes/Friday-POSER-Deus - Dios - God (Photo credit: Caio Basilio)

After the flood, God gave some laws.  They weren’t recorded like the Ten Commandments, but they had the same authority.

Man was to dominate the earth.  Spread out and fill the earth. 

Animals would fear man.  Why?  Partly because now man was given license to eat them.

 I don’t know if man was a vegetarian before the flood, but it sounds like it.  Now they could eat meat, and there were no restrictions except the consumption of blood.  This seems to be a picky little point, but there is more theology here than it appears.  The life of the flesh is in the blood.

Leviticus 17:11
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

Meat prepared by kosher butchers is the best you will find.  It is more expensive, but the blood is drained and cleanliness is paramount.  He did not say that murder was unlawful until the Ten Commandments, and  He promised that such an act would result in more of the same.

God makes covenants.  I think of a covenant as something like a contract.  But that is not exactly true.  In a contract, when one party does not conform to the agreement, the contract is broken.  With God’s covenants, there seems to be a different protocol.  Even when we do not fulfill our part of the covenant, God is not released from His own obligation.  He will do His part anyway.  While there are consequences to violating His requirements on us, our unfaithfulness does not release God from His promise. 

Another truth about covenants:  God initiates them.  He lays the rules.  We don’t have to agree, but this is what will happen. 

The rainbow is the sign of God’s covenant.  We haven’t had rain in a while.  I love to see the rainbow after a good rain.  There may come a time when the earth will be destroyed.  But when it does happen, it will be in accordance with God’s covenant.  It won’t be by flood.

Part of the covenant demands our responsibility for the creation.  God made us dominant and required us to be responsible.  Now we are threatened with global warming.  I’m sure we are seeing the possibility of a change in weather patterns.  But there were such changes before man was a factor.  The ice age is over because of global warming.  Scientists have proved that average temperatures were much colder 700 to 1000 years ago.  Even as recently as 1816 we have a year with out a summer in the United States.  Crops failed and people starved because of volcanic activity. 

If we continue to cause conditions that will not sustain our life-friendly environment, we have reaped the consequences of our behavior.  God has still fulfilled His part of the covenant.