What did God say to Noah?

"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. And fear of you and dread of you shall be upon every animal of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, with all that moves [on] the ground, and with all fishes of the sea: into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you: as the green herb I give you every thing. Only flesh with its life, its blood, ye shall not eat. And surely your blood [that] of your lives will I require: at every animal's hand will I require it; and at man's hand, at the hand of each [the blood] of his brother, will I require the man's life. [Whoso] sheds the man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in God's image made he the man. And ye, be fruitful and multiply; swarm on the earth and multiply on it" (chap. 9:1-7).

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said, "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things, But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." (Gen. 9:1-4)

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you, and the dread of you, shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea: into your hand they are delivered."

Noah was blessed in the new world. That blessing conveyed to him property and dominion in the earth, and the use or enjoyment of the creatures good for food. "Every moving thing that liveth" was given to him, that it might be meat for him.

To Noah and his sons He said, "As the green herb have I given you all things;" to us the word declares, "Blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." Though God gave them more than He gave Adam, they had to learn it was not restoration to his original position, but a new one altogether that they entered upon. The difference between the place in creation of a fallen and an unfallen creature was not forgotten. "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth," God had said to Adam: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth," He also said to Noah and his sons. But to Adam He added, what to Noah He did not, "and subdue it." Was this omission accidental? To subdue the earth was God's original design for man on earth. By the fall he lost that place, and never can regain it. Another man will effect this — the Head of the new creation. No fallen creature could ever fill this place. Their position, then, as regards the earth, told of the fall, whilst their grant of the articles of food told of the sweet savour of the sacrifice.

One more point must be noticed. By virtue of the sacrifice God established. His covenant with Noah, his sons, their seed after them, and with every living thing that was with them, of fowl, cattle, beasts of the earth, and all that went forth of the ark. The earth and all connected with it thus shared in the benefits of the sacrifice; as far as the consequences of man's sin had reached on earth, there would be felt the blessed results of the burnt-offering. "And the bow shall be in the cloud! and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth." Earth besides man was interested in the covenant, as the creature will one day rejoice in the liberty of the glory of the sons of God.

"And Jehovah said to Noah, Go (or Come) into the ark, thou and all thy house; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take [by] sevens, a male and its female, but of the beasts that [are] not clean two, a male and its female; also of birds of the heavens [by] sevens, male and female: to keep seed alive on the face of all the earth. For yet seven days and I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and all the living substance that I have made will I destroy (blot out) from off the face of the ground. And Noah did according to all that Jehovah commanded him."

But sad to say, the long lives of many were very bad. The world, in God's sight, was very had — rotten, and full of fighting. God saw that the badness of man was very great, and that his thoughts were only bad all the time. So the LORD was sorry that He had made man, and said He would destroy all the men, the animals, the creeping things, and the birds of the air for He was sorry that He had made them. But God, in His kindness, made a way to save Noah. God told Noah that the world, being so bad, must be destroyed, but that Noah should take gopher wood and make an ark — a very large boat about 450 feet long, and cover it with pitch, inside and out, with a window on top and the door at the side. The ark should be in three stories, upper, middle and lower. God was bringing a flood of water to cover the earth and all living things would die, except those that entered the ark, Noah and his wife, and his sons and their wives. Also one male and one female of every kind of living creatures: of animals, birds and creeping things, must come into the ark to save their lives. And Noah took of every kind of food into the ark, for him and for them. He built the ark. Why? Because he was "moved with fear." Why was he afraid? Because he believed the words that God spoke to him. God told him of judgment coming; all would be drowned. Noah had faith, that is, he believed God, so he made the ark.

"And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is full of violence through them; and behold I will destroy them with (or from) the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood: rooms (nests) shalt thou make in the ark, and pitch it within and without with pitch. And thus shalt thou make it: three hundred cubits the length of the ark, fifty cubits its breadth, and thirty cubits its height. A transparency (or, light) shalt thou make to the ark, and to a cubit thou shalt finish it above; and the ark's door thou shalt set in its side: [with] lower, second, and third storeys shalt thou make it. And I, behold I, bring the flood of waters on the earth to destroy all flesh wherein [is] the breath of life: all that [is] in the earth shall expire" (vers. 13-17).

"The Lord said, I will destroy man." Nothing less would do. There must be the entire destruction of that which had corrupted God's way on the earth. "The mighty men, and men of renown," must all be swept away, without distinction. "all flesh" must be set aside, as utterly unfit for God. "The end of all flesh is come before me." It was not merely the end of some flesh; no, it was all corrupt, in the sight of Jehovah — all irrecoverably bad. It had been tried, and found wanting; and the Lord announces His remedy to Noah in these words, "Make thee an ark of gopher wood."

And God revealed His purpose to Noah that He would destroy man from the face of the earth. "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness, which is by faith." (Heb. 11.)

We read, "God said to Noah, The end of all flesh is come before Me" (Gen. 6:13). These words clearly intimated that God had condemned the world, and it was only a matter of time for the judgment to fall. Noah realized that the sentence of doom had gone forth from God's lips: he accepted it, and in his turn he condemned the world by building the ark as a refuge from the coming disaster. Every nail, as he drove it home, was a token of salvation for himself and his house, but a token of condemnation for the world: it made the cleavage between himself and the world more pronounced. Has not this a great voice for our hearts to-day?