Rules for the Apocalypse - Genesis - May 31st, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

I want to start this morning with a question. Question is this, have you ever thought about what you would do if the world ended? Like, if there were some kind of nuclear apocalypse and only a few people left.

I've had some friends over the years that think way too much about what they would do in this situation and get way too excited about it, but I feel like there have been at least a hundred movies made about this scenario, dozens of shows and books as

well, because something about it captures the human imagination, just a desolate planet. Basically, nobody left and humanities got to rebuild. But we often forget that this has already happened.

This has already taken place, and the Bible records it for us. It wasn't a nuclear Holocaust, but the entire world was destroyed by a great flood. Everybody died except for eight people and some animals.

And the passage we're looking at this morning describes the very beginning of this post-apocalyptic world.

The big idea here throughout this text that we're gonna read in a moment is that God is setting the rules and laying the foundations for this new era of humanity. And it's really the same era of humanity that we are living in today.

And I say that because these rules that we're gonna be looking at are still in place. God makes this covenant between him and Noah, and all of Noah's and his family's descendants. Well, we are these descendants of Noah.

So this covenant between us and God is still in place. So maybe you can picture the scene in your mind before we read the text here. The world has just ended.

There are eight people left, and they are about to start the world again. Please stand for the reading of God's word. I'll read the text for us.

Genesis 8 verses 20 through chapter 9 verse 17. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, see time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground, and all fish of the sea. Into your hand, they are delivered.

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

And for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. From every beast, I will require it, and from man. From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. And you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth, and multiply in it.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant with you in your offspring after you. And with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth that is with you.

As many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

And God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you, and every living creature that is with you for all future generations. I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

When I bring the clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated and join me as I pray for us.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the truth of it, the beauty and goodness of it. And I pray, God, that you would help us to focus on this truth this morning, to understand it and believe it, and to live in accordance with it.

God, we just so appreciate you revealing yourself to us, not staying hidden, not keeping us in the darkness, not leaving us to figure out life on our own, but you give us this truth, this guidance, this wisdom.

And I pray that we would all receive it with gladness. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

6:20

Humanityʼs Mission

So humanity is starting over, and there's this one big mission statement for human beings. It's repeated multiple times in this text, multiple times throughout the early parts of the Book of Genesis.

We see it in verse 1, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And again in verse 7, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. That's our mission statement.

Over the years, I've often heard business leaders talk about the importance of a clear vision, a clear plan, a clear mission. I'll give you a few examples. One, for example, from Google.

According to Google, their mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Microsoft says that their goal is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Nike says that they want to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. And then they put in parentheses, if you have a body, you are an athlete. So congratulations, you are an athlete if you are in this room.

I think they put that in there just to sell more stuff, but maybe it works. Walmart says that they are about saving people money so they can live better. And what are you about?

What's your mission? As human beings on planet Earth, what is our mission? Well, God says to be fruitful and multiply.

When you look at the book of Genesis, it's repeated over and over again. God is communicating to us, commanding us, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, rule over the earth. So what does that translate to?

What does it mean, be fruitful and multiply? It means have kids and build stuff. It means to go into the world and create and cultivate and rule the world.

The Bible says that God has given us dominion and authority and power. And I'll never forget my ethics classes at the University of San Diego, teaching these classes every semester, we would come upon this issue of like environmental ethics.

And the traditional understanding within environmental ethics in the secular world, is that pollution and climate change and everything wrong with the planet, and the wiping out of the rain forest and the elimination of endangered species, all the

stuff that's gone wrong with planet Earth as a result of what human beings have done, all of it ultimately is Christianity's fault. That's what environmental ethics says. It traces it back to the Book of Genesis and it says, see, look right there.

The Book of Genesis says that God gives people dominion over the Earth. And so Christians read that and they think, okay, well, God's given us the Earth. Let's trash the place.

Let's do whatever we want. Who cares about this place? Which is exactly the wrong understanding based upon the Book of Genesis.

I don't, I can't remember the name of the scholar who first originated that idea. But it caught on and people love it because, well, they don't like Christians. They don't like the Bible.

They hate God. And that's what they want to believe. But the truth is, the Book of Genesis does give us dominion over planet Earth, but dominion is, it's caring for the Earth with respect.

It's more like this great and awesome God, this King of Kings has given us this world as a gift to care for and enjoy. And if some great king were to give you some great gift, would you trash it? No, of course not.

You would care for it and respect it and enjoy it. And that is what we as human beings are called to do with this planet, to multiply and fill the Earth and care for the Earth and enjoy it.

So I think practically speaking, this mission means for us have kids, make music, build skyscrapers, invent new technologies. If you can't build a skyscraper, build a fence. If you can't invent a new technology, sew a dress.

Teach your kids how to fish, plant some flowers. Organize and optimize and do anything and everything in your power to help humanity flourish and bring glory to God. That's God's basic vision for humanity.

And isn't that a beautiful vision? Isn't that a beautiful purpose that God sets out for us? And we should add that our relationship with God is vital to this mission.

As you go on in the scriptures, we're here at the beginning in the Book of Genesis, and we're getting this basic mission statement.

But then, of course, you go on in the scriptures, and you kind of unpack it a bit more, and you add some more specific rules and regulations and guidelines and wisdom and all of that.

So, as you read the Bible, we learn a lot more about the importance of our relationship with God, how to worship God, how to serve God.

We get a lot more specific guidance, but we cannot drift and lose sight of the basic mission that God has given us as human beings. As any great leader will tell you, organizations have a tendency to drift from their mission.

And humanity as a whole, I would argue, has drifted quite a lot. Look at our world today. What do we want?

What do people do? What's the priority? Is it to multiply and be fruitful and fill the earth?

Or is it to make money? I think if you look at Western society, if you look at most developed nations throughout the world, instead of having kids, we just want to make money. Instead of making things, we just want to consume things.

Instead of ruling the world, we think that the world should rule us. Like we'll look to the stars and the planets to tell us who we are and how our lives should go. That is astrology, right?

Or we'll look at the world instead of taking dominion over the world like God has commanded us to. We think that we're the problem with the world. And the less we're involved, the better.

If there were no human beings, everything would be better off. Isn't that how most people think? We have drifted from our mission.

The values and vision of people in the world today are basically the exact opposite of what God commands. God said to multiply and fill the earth, but people are simply refusing to do that because it's too much work or it costs too much money.

People don't want to have kids. You look at the numbers around the Western world, the developed nations of the world. I've talked about this before, but it's really shocking and important.

The numbers tell us that people are choosing not to have children. They are choosing not to have children. They are not multiplying.

People on average in America, I think, have 1.7 kids. That's not multiplying. People would rather kill their newborn babies before they're born, then deal with changing diapers and washing dishes.

It's a sad state of affairs. And then we sit there and wonder why everybody is so depressed and hopeless. Here's the question for us today.

Do you trust God enough to take risks and do what He has called you to do? Are you being fruitful in this world? We're all at different stages of life, but we can all be fruitful with the gifts and opportunities that God has given us.

And sometimes that's going to be hard. Sometimes it's much easier to sit down and watch Netflix than it is to build something that contributes to the flourishing of humanity.

Even if it's scary, even if these things are hard, this is what God has called us to do, and He's gone to great lengths to help us be successful at it. Let me say that last part again, because that's a huge chunk of what this passage is about.

God's given us this mission, but He's gone to great lengths to help us be successful at it. Let me show you this in the text.

15:43

Godʼs Provisions

God provides all kinds of guidelines and assurances so that Noah and his family can carry out this mission that He's given to us. First, at the end of Chapter 8, He promises them stability. So again, He's telling them, go, be fruitful, and multiply.

And He's giving them stability so that they can do that. Look at verses 21 and 22. He says, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

You can imagine that that Noah and his family might have experienced some PTSD from what they had gone through. I mean, talk about trauma. Talk about a traumatic series of events.

The entire world has been destroyed. Everybody they knew except for their immediate family was dead. So are they just ready to go, to go out and to have kids and to build stuff?

Probably not. They're probably a little bit shaken. I mean, they might wonder, what if God decides to destroy the world again?

Like if they mess up, if they go out and they sin tomorrow, is God just gonna wipe the rest of them out? And if he doesn't wipe them out, are the fountains of the deep gonna open up again and swallow up their homes?

They might have had a little bit of trauma and PTSD. So you see, they needed assurances. I think there's a reason God says like 19 times in this text, I will not destroy the earth again.

When I was reading it a few minutes ago, I felt like I was repeating myself over and over again because I was, because God was repeating himself. I'm not gonna destroy the world again.

They needed that kind of assurance, I think, so that they could have the confidence to go out and do what God was calling them to do. So that's largely what this passage in this covenant is about.

It's God assuring them that they will be able to carry out this mission. He's not gonna wipe them all out again. He's providing a steady, predictable environment for them to grow and build.

God wants them to succeed. It's really remarkable how detailed God is in setting them up to carry out this mission. You can see in our passage how God covers all the bases.

He assures them he's not gonna blow up the world again tomorrow. He assures them that they're gonna have a steady, predictable environment, and he assures them that the animals are not going to eat them. Don't forget about that part.

We take this for granted.

We don't normally worry about this kind of thing, but if you think about the situation that they're in, they had just gotten off the ark, and there are eight people, eight human beings, four men, four women, but there are thousands of animals,

thousands of animals, and I'm sure some of them were quite big, with big teeth and sharp claws and hunger. So they might have thought, well, are these animals just gonna devour us in the next couple of days?

How are we gonna deal with thousands of animals when there are only eight of us? But it's okay because God had it taken care of. Look at verse two.

God tells them, The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are delivered.

Into your hand they are delivered. But I want you to notice as well verse four. What does it say in verse four?

He prohibits them from consuming the blood of the animals. So he allows them to eat the animals, but tells them not to consume the blood of the animals, for the blood contains the life.

And many scholars say that this was a reminder to them that they didn't own the animals. God gave them the animals to use, to eat, but not to own. It would be wrong for them to consume the blood.

It could be like them consuming the life of the animal, which would simply be too much. So God's sort of setting a proper limit on their dominion and reminding them those animals got their life from me, not from you. So respect those animals.

Don't consume their life like you own them, which I thought was very, very interesting. And yet, he says, verse two, they're gonna be afraid of you. The fear of you, the dread of you, shall be upon them.

That's something that we take for granted these days. Like, don't worry if you see a snake. It's more scared of you than you are of it.

Well, why is that? Why are snakes more scared of us than we are of them? If you see a giant bear, a giant bear that could rip you to shreds in three seconds, don't worry, just clap and yell and it's going to run away.

But why does the bear do that? Well, the bear runs away because the fear of you and the dread of you is upon it. God designed it that way so that we could successfully multiply and be fruitful and fill the earth.

God also designed protections for us from other human beings. Verse 6, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image.

You see, before the flood, the Book of Genesis records a number of murders. Cain famously murders Abel. And then down the line in Cain's descendants, he has a descendant named Lamech, who writes poetry boasting about his various murders.

Then we read about the Nephilim, who are probably violent and scary and murderous men. So when they get off the ark, they might be thinking, how are we gonna multiply if before the ark, before the flood, everybody was killing each other?

How is humanity gonna multiply and fill the earth if we're all so inclined to violence? Well, I think that God need to put these rules in place so that we didn't wipe each other out and thank God for that.

If God had never come out so strongly against murder, the world might be a very different place. We might not be here today, but again, God is setting them up for success.

He's dotting the I's and crossing the T's, covering the bases to make sure that they can successfully multiply and fill the earth.

22:52

Everlasting Covenant

And finally, he guarantees all of it with a covenant. Verse 9 of Chapter 9, Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you.

I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. That is God's covenant promise to Noah and his family and all their descendants.

And how do we know that God is still committed to this covenant? Well, every time you see a rainbow in the sky, that's a sign of God's covenant commitment. I love how Derek Kidner describes this.

Derek Kidner is a famous Old Testament scholar, and he wrote that this first explicit covenant is remarkable for its breath, embracing every living creature, its permanence, its perpetual, everlasting, et cetera, and its generosity.

For it was as unconditional as it was undeserved. That's how God works, generously, providing unconditional, undeserved guarantees. And Kidner finishes by remarking this.

For good measure, it's sign and seal a feature of all covenants was such as to emphasize God's sole initiative, far out of man's reach. If you think about the rainbow up in the sky, far out of our reach, emphasizing God's sole initiative.

I just really love how he highlights, how he describes this covenant, putting the emphasis on God's goodness towards us. And that's a message that I hope that we all walk away with this morning.

If we see one thing in this passage, I hope we can see that God is merciful and gracious, and we are so blessed to be a part of his mission for the world.

25:02

Future Perspectives

I think that's the headline here. But it's also interesting to think about how all of this has played out. So, God gives Noah and his family this mission millennia ago, be fruitful and multiply, and here we are thousands of years later.

And I think we've been pretty successful, right? We start, they started with eight people, and here we are with roughly eight billion people on the planet. We have houses and cars and skyscrapers and computers and like 50 different kinds of apples.

We have pet dogs, pet birds, pet snakes. We have Monet and Mozart and rockets that go to space. Humanity, since this covenant, has done a lot of stuff.

So that's how far we've come, and we can ask, where are we going from here? Are we going to continue as human beings to build and thrive? And are Christians going to go out and share the gospel until Jesus comes back?

Will Christianity continue to grow and make the world a better place? Do you have a positive view for the future or a negative view for the future? Do you think we've largely been successful at multiplying and filling the earth and being fruitful?

Or do you think we've kind of failed? There's a lot of people, but things haven't gone so well. Well, if you have a positive view, then you might be a post-millennial Christian, a post-millennial Christian.

Long story short, there's a prophecy about a millennium of peace and flourishing and thriving recorded in Revelation chapter 20. And this prophecy has been debated pretty much since it was written.

There are a lot of different perspectives on this, but Revelation 20 describes this millennium or this thousand years of prosperity and peace on the earth ruled over by Jesus and his people. And so the question is, is that millennium happening now?

Is it going to happen in the future? Is it literal? Is it symbolic?

And there's a whole wide range of views on exactly how to understand that millennium. And one of these views is called post-millennialism. And the post-millennial view basically says this.

It says that Noah and his family were successful, that everybody since then, we've largely been successful and multiplying and being fruitful.

And then, of course, Jesus comes on the scene and accomplishes our salvation, our eternal salvation, and Christians go out and share the gospel. And we've been doing a pretty good job of that. Christianity has spread all over the world.

Christianity has changed the world for the better. And essentially, the idea is that Christianity is going to continue to grow and spread throughout the world, and eventually, the vast majority of people on the planet will become Christians.

And at that point, Jesus will return. So the vast majority of people on the planet become Christians, and there's a thousand years of peace and prosperity and very little sin and darkness on the planet.

And that thousand years takes place, as Revelation 20 describes, and then Jesus returns after that to set up the eternal kingdom. Roughly speaking, that's the post-millennial view. The pre-millennial view is kind of the opposite.

The pre-millennial view says that Jesus is going to return before the millennium. Like, humanity sort of veered off the rails. The world is spiraling into darkness and chaos, and things are getting worse and worse and worse.

And maybe if you watch the news, that seems to make a lot of sense to you. If you pay attention to what's happening around the world, maybe you think, yeah, humanity is getting worse and worse, and things are just getting horrible.

And if that's the way that you view the world, then you might sympathize with the pre-millennial view, where things get worse and worse and worse, until Jesus finally returns and fixes everything and establishes his kingdom completely on the earth,

and there's a thousand years of peace and prosperity. So those are a couple of the different views on the millennium.

The third one is called Amillennialism, as in like no millennium, but what it really means is there is a millennial kingdom, there is a thousand years of peace and prosperity, but it's largely symbolic and very kind of nuanced, but we won't get into

that one today. But I bring all this up because there are many people in the post-millennial camp that use this passage, this covenant with Noah, as proof that things are going to get better and better until Jesus comes back.

The idea is that God gives Noah and his family this mission, and he sets them up for success, which is just what I've been explaining and showing you in the passage. God gives Noah the mission. He makes a covenant with them.

He sets them up for success. Do not murder. The animals are going to be afraid of you.

I'm not going to destroy the earth, so go be fruitful and multiply. He sets them up for success. Therefore, the post-millennialist concludes, they will be successful.

Therefore, humanity is going to accomplish what God told them to do, and eventually the gospel is going to go out and the vast majority of people will become Christians, and the world will get better and better until Jesus comes back.

That's the post-millennial picture of the world, and it may be true. I hope it's true. To be honest, I haven't fully decided my position on these matters.

I kind of lean in this direction, that post-millennialism is true, and yet I don't think this passage is good evidence for that view. I don't think this passage proves that theory to be correct.

If you read the passage, it doesn't say all that stuff, does it? It says a few of those things, but then post-millennialists tend to take this passage and read a bunch of other stuff into it.

They squeeze it and kind of massage it to draw out these implications that aren't actually there in the text.

So this passage does not prove that the world is going to get better and better until Jesus comes back, but this passage does prove something. It proves that God is merciful and gracious and good.

It proves that we can trust him, that he cares about us, that we can count on him, that as long as there are rainbows in the sky, we can count on the goodness of God. And that's what I want us to take away this morning.

32:15

Godʼs Eager Mercy

I think we see it really powerfully in verse 21 of chapter 8. Let me read that part again. So Noah gets off the ark, and one of the first things that he does after stretching his legs and getting acquainted is he, he makes a sacrifice.

He builds an altar and makes a sacrifice to God. He takes some of the animals that were set aside for this purpose, and he lights them on fire as a sacrifice to God.

And then it says this in verse 21, When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature is I have done. And when I first read this, I thought it was really strange. Like, why would God give Noah that promise after Noah makes a sacrifice to him?

Like, does God just love sacrifices that much? Why does God respond so radically to Noah's sacrifice? Does he really care that much about some like primitive, religious ritual?

And the answer is no. The answer is no. Later in the Old Testament, God makes it clear that sacrifices, like the one that Noah gave, they don't really mean anything to him.

So what's really going on here? Maybe you can think about it like this. There are two options.

Either God really, really, really loves the smell of burning animals, like he loves it so much that he'll give you just about anything if he can just smell that smell, or God is just so eager to show us mercy, that if we just give him something,

anything, like a sacrifice, a prayer, a gesture of honor and respect, if we give God the slightest reason, God will jump at the chance to show us mercy and grace. And I think that's the truth right there. That's who God is.

He doesn't care about sacrifices. He's just waiting for any opportunity to show mercy and grace. That's what this passage is showing us.

And God never changes. That's the good news for us today. That's how God was with Noah.

And the Bible says that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Malachi 3.6, the Lord never changes. So that's how God is with us today.

I'm sure there are people in this room who feel like they're not good enough for God. I'm sure there are people in this room who feel like they have to get themselves together and be good and do good in order for God to show them love and mercy.

But that's not who God is.

What we see here is that if you have one drop of faith, Jesus taught this, if you have one drop of faith, I mean, if you reach out to God with a one word prayer, if all you can say is help, God is ready to jump out of his shoes to show you mercy and

grace. That's what this passage is showing us. That's what the gospel shows us. While we were still sinners, God showed his love for us by sending his son Jesus to die for us.

The Bible teaches that God is mighty to save. And if you look closely, you can also see that God is eager to save. You don't have to get yourself healthy so that you can go see the doctor.

And you don't have to get yourself holy so that you can go to God. No, God is eager to save. He's eager to show us mercy.

That's who he was for Noah, and that's who he is for us.