Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is the podcast where we discuss the Bible that you just read. In fact, we assume that you're reading along with us. And if you're joining us for the first time, Hey, welcome. We're glad to have you. And I say we, but I am missing pastor PJ. He's going to be out for a couple of weeks, nine, 10, 12 days, whatever it is that you and I are going to be together for several days. And I am honored and delighted to spend some time with you in your Bible. The way that we designed this is to be a tool to help you read your Bible and to get more out of it. We understand the Bible is a hard book. In fact, it's one of the most challenging books to have ever been written. And part of the challenge is that it's ancient. There's a lot of symbols and ideas that are just foreign to modern eyes, modern ears. And so we really want to help you derive at least the, the content. Probably not exhaustively. We'll never get there, which is why we'll be doing this every day, but enough for you to walk away feeling like you got something significant out of the text. And so thank you for entrusting yourself to us. We promise to take that with great weight. We don't do this lightly. We love what we do. We, we, Embrace it wholeheartedly. And we want to be sure that you walk away with a little bit better understanding of the texts that you're reading. On top of that, there's the community aspect of this as well. So good for the church to read the Bible together. And of course, the church that we're a part of is compass Bible church, North Texas. Pastor PJ is our lead senior pastor. I am a associate. I am pastor rod case. You and I haven't met yet. Pleasure to meet you, but we do this because we want to help support our community. To have a centralized, an anchored position with the Bible. We want the Bible to influence how we think, how we speak. We want the Bible to influence the relationships that we have. And so we do things like this. It's enormously, costly for us to do this, but we want to do it because we know what benefits you. So thank you again for joining us. We want you to know your Bible better. We want you to do your Bible in community and we want it to benefit and bless you this entire year. So genesis chapter eight through 11, you've got four chapters to cover here today. And then we're going to take a pause in Genesis and we're going to move over to the book of Job tomorrow. In fact, chapters one through 11 in Genesis is often called primeval history. This is the period of time that is ancient. This is the, what happened in the beginning. What we're going to look at from Genesis chapter 12 to the end of the book is called patriarchal history. This is where you see God in his covenant with the patriarchs and how he works through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to build his covenant people. We'll get to that soon enough after a brief stint, and I say brief, and I mean a couple weeks in the book of Job. But before we get there, let's finish Genesis 8 through 11. Genesis chapter 8 is where we have the flood start to subside. Yesterday we talked about the nature of the flood being universal. This affected the whole globe, and it had ramifications for every single human being that lived at that time. God preserved a small remnant, Noah and his sons and their wives. And so they spent a long time on the boat. In fact, in Genesis chapter eight, if you did all the math, along with chapters seven and six, you're looking at about 370 days, you're looking at just a little over a year of time. Imagine that. You go on a cruise ship, Caribbean cruise, and you're there for a whole year. I'm sure you'd get pretty anxious to see land right away. Well, in any case, even though he might have been anxious, Noah is okay waiting for God to do his thing. In fact, Noah doesn't even leave the arc until God gives him the go ahead in verses 13 through 16. Let me just quickly read it here for you. In the 601st year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters are dried from the whole earth. And so Noah sees that the land is ready to receive him and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month on the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out. Verse 15 is key here. Then God said to Noah, go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your son's wives with you. And so finally, after receiving the word from God, Noah is able and willing to depart from the Ark. It was a great act of humility on his part to wait for God's command. You'll notice that what God says as soon as he leaves the Ark is a reiteration of what we read in Genesis 1. He tells them, in verse 17, to be fruitful and multiply on the earth. In fact, he's going to say this three separate times after they depart the Ark. It's almost like he really wants them to understand this. Be fruitful, multiply. And so they, they depart from the ark and then all the animals and beasts and the creepy things, they also depart from the ark and they begin to make their way back to wherever God intended for them to go. Well, after this occasion, Noah builds an altar to the Lord. This is the first time you see a sacrifice take place. That is not from the hand of God. We assume that God sacrificed animals to clothe Adam and Eve, but here you have an explicit detailing of Noah doing this. So Noah offers some of the animals to the Lord and notice it's a pleasing aroma to the Lord. And he says in his heart, I'll never again curse the ground because of man for the intention of man's heart is evil. Evil from his youth. So God's acknowledging the reality that mankind has fallen and he's evil, but he's not going to destroy the earth in this way again. In fact, second Peter tells us that God's not going to destroy the world with a flood. He's going to destroy the world with fire the next time that he does this, but it's not going to be a flood. In Genesis chapter 9, we continue to pick up with where he's at. He tells him again, be fruitful and multiply. Again, this is important because the whole lot of humanity had just been wiped out. And so it's important that they hear this and heed this. Humanity needs to be repopulated. Then God also adds this new dimension of what they're able to receive in verse three says every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. So now, in addition to the plants, mankind can eat meat. Praise God for that, because we still enjoy that today. In fact, we enjoy meat even more than how Israel understood it, because to this point, remember, they don't have the mosaic law yet. There are no restrictions about clean and unclean animals as they know it. Now, there's still an idea about this because Noah. Understands the category that God gave him of clean and unclean, but there's not laws that define what they can or cannot eat, just yet. And so God gives him a blank check. The animals that I've given you, you can eat them. And I'm sure Noah fist pumped. I'm not sure the animals did probably didn't like that as much. Nevertheless, they move on. He still says, you have the green plants. I give you those things as well. But one caveat here in verse four, you can't eat something with its blood inside, which doesn't mean you can't have something rare or medium rare. He's saying, look, you're not going to be like the nations around you, which are going to come eventually. We're not talking about anyone in particular at this point, at least not right now. Again, they all perished. You don't want to become like a pagan nation. You're not going to be eating blood. You're not going to be practicing these pagan rituals. And then he says something fascinating that we all still benefit from today. He talks about the sanctity of human life. This is one of the biggest and most important areas in the Bible that defines and defends what we understand as the sanctity of life. He says this in verse six, whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image. And so here you have God defining for Noah. What it means that man is unique. He is made in God's image. In fact, because he possesses the image of God, he now has this uniqueness and this dignity that should not be violated by anybody else, man or beast. And if that were to happen, he says, this is the first thing that's going to happen. That person is going to forfeit their own lives. The reason why, because man possesses God's image. We said a few podcasts ago that the image of God is not necessarily a practice. It's not something that we do as much as it is something that we are. We are ontologically the image of God. It's just not something that can be get more or less of in the terms of, one person having more intellect or one person having more emotion or will that mankind by his very nature is the image of God. It is the position God has granted him. That position possesses practices. And so as an image bearer, you're going to do things in alignment with that image. You're going to act like God. And of course, the only people who can truly do this are those who have been regenerated and renewed by God to act like not only the image of God, but the renewed image of God in Christ. Verse seven, God. Commands again for the third time, and you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. God's concern that they spread and that they grow all over the face of the planet. He also says, look, I'm no, I'm going to make my covenant with you. This is called the Noahic covenants. I'm never going to destroy the world by the floodwaters again. Now, today we still see floods in a variety of places. We see floods that take out a lot of important structures and people and places, et cetera, et cetera. So here though, you can see, God does not say that there'll never be floods again, but that there will never be a global flood to destroy mankind as it did beforehand. The second half of chapter nine, you have a really interesting incident. That's hard to wrap your mind around because there's a few pieces here that don't seem to quite add up, but let's take a look here in verses 18 and following you have Noah's descendants. And one of the things that happens here, Ham, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, you'll notice here, Ham was the father of Canaan. That's an important detail. So the line of Ham is going to produce the Canaanites and all the people that you and I are going to confront in the coming chapters of scripture, where you see the enemies of Israel. working against them. It's the Canaanites. It's the people of Ham. What happens here? And the short answer is, Noah gets a little tipsy, shall we say, and whether he intended for that or not, we don't know, but it happens. Verse 22 says Ham, the father of Canaan, again, scripture is pointing your attention to this reality. He saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. And the traditional interpretation is that what's happening is that he's making fun of this situation. He's mocking his father. This is a, a bad scenario, obviously, and in a culture where honor and shame are such a big deal, this would have been tremendously offensive and uncouth for someone like Ham, one of the sons of Noah. So, Well, when Noah awakens, he finds out what, what Ham did to him. And he says in verse 25, cursed be Canaan. Now this is interesting, isn't it? Because you would expect it to say cursed be Ham. And yet what you have is cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. Now one of two possibilities. The first possibility. Is that what's happening here is actually more than what we're reading and that we're reading something that's it's meant to talk about something that happened without being explicit and unnecessarily offensive. And so that's a possibility and I'll just leave it at that. The second possibility is that Canaan, represented by Ham, canaan represents Ham's offspring, and they're going to suffer because of their father's bad decision. Now that's probably the more likely situation here. It's just, it's discomforting because we're not expecting this, the family line to suffer because of Ham's actions. And yet that is what happens. In fact, that's what happens with Adam. Adam is cursed, but so is everybody else who comes from his line. And so I think that's, what's happening here. Doesn't quite answer all the questions for us, but it does leave us something to work with. Noah at the same time, blesses the Lord, the God of Shem. And he says, let Canaan be a servant. May God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem and let Canaan be a servant. So even as he's cursing Canaan, he's blessing Shem and Japheth. Shem will be the line that carries on for us. In fact, Shem is going to be the line that we're going to pay close attention to as the weeks progress. In chapter 10 of Genesis, you have what is called the table of nations. You have all the people that are descended from Noah. And of course you have this one interesting line here in verse 25 to Eber were born two sons. The name of the one was Peleg for in his days, the earth was divided. Okay. So this is interesting because this is out of place here. What we understand this to be as a reference to chapter 11, where you have the tower of Babel or Tower of Babel, that Everyone divides and scatters from we'll talk about that tomorrow, but just know that this little nugget here is slightly out of place chronologically. It's in the right place thematically. This is what Moses is trying to do. He's setting up the next chapter of Genesis as it were by saying, okay, here's where we're at. Here are the table of nations. Here's all the people, the progenitors that come from this line. And here's what you can expect. It's a teaser into tomorrow's reading. Actually, I take that back. Cause we're not looking at this tomorrow. We're going to look at this in a couple of weeks. So keep your bookmark in your Bible here at Genesis chapter 11. We'll pick up here in a few weeks after we jump into the book of Job. If you made it this far, Hey, thank you so much for joining me today. I know we have a lot of stuff that we didn't cover here. As always, if you have questions that are pertaining to the texts that we're looking at, feel welcome to send it to podcast at compass ntx. org, I'm so grateful and honored that you decided to join. Let's pray before we depart. Lord, we do thank you for the privilege of seeing how your hand is operated throughout human history. And we are grateful that we are, for those of us listening who have responded to Christ, we are blessed and protected in the ark of Christ. It is in him that we can alone find salvation. It is in his protective covering that we know we'll never suffer under your wrath. And we pray, Lord, that we would be so compelled and convicted by this truth that we would long for our neighbors, our kids, our husbands, our wives, people that are unbelievers in our lives. You would help us to feel a great gravity of love for them and a great desire to pray and to reach out to them with the truth. Thank you again for our salvation. We pray that you would bless us greatly with it and that you would help us to make progress in our faith this year as we uncover your word and seek to see you through its pages. We love you. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you so much for spending time with me. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow and the next several days without pastor PJ. I hope you'll join me. Otherwise it's going to be really lonely here. So please, I'll see you tomorrow. God willing.