v.20—The first thing Noah did hen he left the ark was to build an altar to the Lord.
Noah was grateful the Lord for having saved him and his family from the flood.
God was well pleased with Noah’s offerings.
To show His approval of Noah’s actions He made a covenant with him.
See verses 21-22, also 9:11-13.
The contents of the covenant are as follows:
1. I will not curse the ground anymore.
2. Neither will I destroy all flesh again with a flood.
3. As long as the earth remains there will be
A. Seedtime and harvest
B. Summer and winter
C. Day and night
God also gave a guarantee that He would keep His covenant. 9:13—“I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.”
vv.5-6—Capital Punishment
Before the flood men did what was right in their own eyes. This included murder. It was a lawless society.
Cain and Lamech were murderers, probably there were many more. These days were filled with violence.
We have reason to believe that men murdered indiscriminately and, like Lamech, boasted of this dastardly deed.
In these verses God is initiating a new Divine principle for the post-flood era—v.6.
I interpret this to mean that if anyone deliberately took another person’s life he should forfeit his own life.
The reason is given in the same verse. “Man is made in the image of God.”
To deface the king’s image is a form of treason, signify hatred against him, this action also means that if the king had been present he would have been killed.
How terrible then it must be to destroy by murder the image of the King of Kings.
The tremendous upsurge of the crime of murder is possible due to the fact that the death penalty has been annulled.
In doing so men are tampering with Divine principles and therefore must pay the consequences.
11:1-4—These verses show us the ways of men in this new world.
Mankind is in revolt against God, seeking to glorify and deify themselves.
This is hard to understand, for:
1. God had absolutely cleansed the earth.
2. He had saved the best family.
3. The environment was perfect.
Everything had changed but the heart of man, which was deceitful and desperately wicked.
This is the second chance man was given.
First, in the perfect surroundings of the Garden of Eden.
Secondly, in the perfect environment of a purged world.
Let us now look first of all at the man behind this revolt and then at the revolt itself.
10:8—“And Cush begat Nimrod; and he began to be a mighty one in the earth.”
The word “began” means “first.” “Mighty One” means despot.
Nimrod was the world’s first dictate.
The Chaldeans paraphrased this verse, “Cush begat Nimrod, who began to prevail in wickedness, he slew innocent blood and rebelled against Jehovah.”
Nimrod fulfilled his ambitious designs in open rebellion against God.
10:10 reads, “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel.”
This is the key to the interpretation of the first 9 verses of chapter 11.
They journeyed from the east; when they came to the valley of Shinai they decided to build an impregnable feature. One which neither God nor man could conquer.
Quote at this point v.4.
They built this city for two reasons:
1. To make a name for themselves.
2. To keep them from being scattered abroad.
This was in defiance to what God had said, “Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth.”
In God’s estimation man had gone too far, so He visited mankind in a most unusual way.
v.1 says, “The whole earth was of one language.”
v.7 says that God confounded their language, so that they could not understand each other’s speech.
v.8 tells us that God then scattered them abroad upon the face of the earth.
Another crisis had arrived in the history of the world.
Once again the human race was guilty of turning their backs upon God.
Genesis 11:6 tells us of God’s attitude to man’s rebellion.
Nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
At this point in time God abandoned the nations and they became the victims of their own evil desires.
In other words God withdrew all divine restraint, but not before they had twice received the revelation of God’s mercy. To Adam then to Noah.
Paul, in Romans 1 describes the changes in world beliefs.
He does more than suggest that the cause of the wickedness and ungodliness in the world today all began in the days of Nimrod and his followers.
The stages of decline are as follows:
1. Apostasy
2. Atheism
3. Idolatry
Idolatry enslaves people mentally, sensually, spiritually. We all have idols.
At this point, Paul says, “God gave them up to uncleanness”—v.24.
Next, Paul says that those who abandon God, find themselves abandoned by God.
“God gave them up unto vile affections”—v.26.
Verses 26-27 describe some of the hideous sins and unnatural vices in which some people engage.
Pre-marital sex—fornication—adultery—free love—lesbianism.
Homosexuality, the sin which brought down fire upon Sodom.
v.28—Then follows mental perversion.
“They would not retain the knowledge of God.”
And when man reached the point of excluding God from his reckoning, God gave them over to a reprobate mind.
Verses 29-32 is a catalogue of 22 sins which characterizes the reprobate mind and world today, and will continue unabated until the Lord comes to the earth.
Mankind is incurably bad—hopelessly lost—inextricably enmeshed in the devil’s net.
But there is one hope—the Gospel—v.16.
It is the “power of God.”
Compare the power of God with the power of Rome.