Genesis 035 – Government’s Beginning

Genesis #035-

Government Begins

Dr. Andrew Woods

Genesis 9

 

Today in our passage, Genesis 1-11, is the beginning of the human race, featuring four major subjects:

1. Creation, the way the world was before things went wrong (Genesis 1-2). And then you have…
2. The fall (Genesis 3-5), where everything went haywire. Yet, in the midst of all that sin, there’s hope — a coming Messiah to restore everything to how it originally was. Genesis 3:15, as we have talked about, is really the first prophecy about the coming Messiah, Jesus. So, there’s hope in the midst of the calamity. But then comes one of the biggest events in human history…
3. The flood (Genesis 6-9), what we’ve been studying of late. We have discussed or studied events before the flood, Genesis 6, the flood itself, Genesis 7, the abating of the flood waters, Genesis 8, and now we are into…
4. Events following the flood, post-flood events (Genesis 9). Those post-flood events represent, first, the Noahic covenant. God enters at this point into a covenant with Noah, and that becomes the beginning of an institution that God graciously gave to humanity, called the institution of human government.

Last week, or the last couple of weeks, as we have studied, begins with promises. Noah comes out of the ark, and he is a worshiper; he offers a sacrifice unto the Lord. The LORD, at that point, begins to make three promises to Noah:

Number one, never to flood the earth again.

Number two, man’s nature has not been altered because of the flood. The same old wickedness of man will continue. And then …

Number three, the earth is going to go through uninterrupted seasons or cycles until the Lord brings an end to it all one day by fire.

Now we move into Genesis 9:1-7 where we see a tremendous provision from God as part of this covenant with Noah. This is where government itself starts. There has been, up to this point in time, no institution of human government.

So, here’s a little outline that we can use to navigate our way through these verses. I’m not sure how far we will make it today, but let’s see. Beginning at Genesis 9:1, we see a familiar creation, in this case, re-creation theme. Notice what 9:1 says:  And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply,…”  Notice first that God blessed Noah and his sons. God’s blessing has always been on humanity. Human beings are different than any creature God has made. They bear His very image, so if you are a member of the human family, which we all are, we are blessed. It reminds us of Genesis 1:28, where it says very clearly, “…God blessed them…” And then it’s repeated in Genesis 5:2, “…He blessed them…” so you should feel blessed. You are not a curse. You are not an accident. You are not a blight on the earth. In fact, the earth itself was made for you, and God intentionally blessed you as a member of the human race. We are not naked apes. We are not products of ‘from the goo to you via the zoo over billions of years.’ You are a special handiwork of God, a specially designed creation.

It reminds me of what David said in the Psalms. In Psalm 139, I don’t know what he was doing. Was he sitting under a tree? But he looked at himself; I like to think that he might have been looking at his own fingerprints and pondering how they were different from all the other fingerprints of all the other people who have ever lived. Or maybe he was thinking about his respiratory system and its complexity as he inhaled and exhaled. Or perhaps he was thinking about his circulatory system and all that goes into making a person a person. He says in Psalm 139, “For I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

This is really the message that we need to be giving to people in this time of despair, because the world system is telling them that they are blights and they are accidents, and that their life has no meaning, purpose, dignity, sacredness or significance; and the Bible is saying exactly the opposite.

God blessed the human race from the beginning, and then also notice in Genesis 9:2 some familiar language. He says, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”  It’s exactly what God told Adam and Eve to do in Genesis 1:27: “God created man in His own image in the image of God, He created him, male and female.”  He created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

And with the global deluge, the global flood, and the world’s population wiped out except for eight people, that mandate now rests upon Noah’s sons to repopulate the earth along with their respective wives.

Not only are human beings not a curse, but neither are children. The Bible is clear that children are a blessing from the Lord. We in western civilization, western culture, view children as irritants who are in the way, ‘holding back my budget from what I think it ought to be in terms of personal prosperity.’  Yet we need to refresh ourselves in what the Bible actually says about children. They are a special blessing from God to you. So, oh my goodness, as I’m teaching here, this actually does apply to Mother’s Day, doesn’t it? Wow. It’s amazing what the Lord does with speaking through donkeys. You know, sometimes as preachers, we get a little bit of a big head, ‘Look at how God is using me’ and the Holy Spirit will say, ‘Well, I spoke through a donkey in the book of Numbers. So if I can use a donkey, I can use you.’

God blessed the human race, and God told the human race following the flood to be fruitful and multiply.  What is interesting in Genesis 9:1 is what is missing. Remember what God said in Genesis 1:26-28 about ruling? He said, “…let them rule [Adam and Eve] over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, …”  In 1:28, He said, “…subdue it; [the earth] and rule over... [it].”

That was the beginning of the Office of Theocratic Administrator, which simply means someone who governs for God. God vested Adam and Eve with authority over the earth, yet that part of it is not repeated here. The blessing is repeated: “Be fruitful and multiply” is repeated, but this language of dominion and authority over the earth is not mentioned. Why is that? Because with the fall of man, Satan has become the prince and power of the air. That is the great tragedy of what happened in the fall at Eden. Satan used circumstances to put into motion the sin of the human race, which elevated Satan to the authority over this planet. The rest of the Scripture bears this out very well:

• He is the prince and power of the air (Eph 2:2)
• He is the prince of this world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11)
• He is the God of this age (2 Cor 4:4).
• He is someone that roams about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour

(1 Peter 5:8).

• And we know from 1 John 5:19 that the entire world lies in his power.

This is why we are called in Ephesians 6:12 to “put on the full armor of God,” because we are in a wrestling match with the prince and power of the air, Satan himself. And that will not change until Jesus touches down on planet Earth. By the way, the Bible says that He will do that. It’s actually in the oldest book of the Bible, the book of Job, in Job 19:25-26 where Job says, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will take His stand upon the earth.”

Zechariah 14:4 says that when He comes back, His feet will touch on the Mount of Olives, and that the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west.

As the disciples watched Jesus ascend in Acts 1:9-10, the angels present said to them, “…why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” He left physically, visibly, and tangibly. And He’s coming back in the same way. We believe in a literal second coming. Only when that second coming happens will Satan be dethroned. In the meantime, we are living in hostile territory. That’s why we are called aliens in this world. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5:20, calls us ambassadors. We are here to represent God’s values on enemy territory. If I am America’s ambassador to Iran, let’s say I’m not in Iran to orchestrate regime change.  I’m there to represent American values in a place where the world or that part of the world does not understand American values. That’s your calling as a Christian—why it is so difficult for you as a Christian sometimes to fit in with this world. It is difficult to fit in in your workplace. It is difficult sometimes to fit in within your own family. God forbid, sometimes it’s even difficult for you to fit even in your own church.

There is a sort of unnatural tension between us and the world because we are not currently subduing the world; we are representing Christian values in a world that is under Satan’s dominion. You can observe not only what Genesis 9:1 says but what it omits. Notice in Genesis 9:2 that God compensates for that. And what does He say in that verse? He says, “The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand, they are given.” So, the authority language is missing here. But at the same time, God compensates for that by putting into the animal kingdom a fear of man. We are not here to be ruled by the animals. We are here to subdue the animal kingdom. We are not to be in the cages at the zoo. It is the other way around, so man’s authority over the animal kingdom, whether in the sky, the earth, etc., continues even though Satan is currently the prince and power of the air.

Arnold Fruchtenbaum, in his Genesis Commentary, puts it this way: “Nevertheless, the command to subdue the earth is not repeated, since this authority now belongs to Satan, who usurped the authority from man when man fell… The command to multiply is repeated again, but the command to subdue the earth is not repeated. So man retains the authority over the animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom; but he does not have authority over the earth. That authority has been given to Satan, who usurped the authority from man. John 12:31 states that Satan is the prince [and power] of this world; II Corinthians 4:4 says that he is the god of this age; and Luke 4:6 states that Satan has the authority over the kingdoms of this world.”

But the authority of man over the animals continues. This is the whole significance of Adam naming the animals in Genesis 2:18-20 [see slide on Biblical Significance of Naming]. Every animal that God brought to Adam, Adam gave that animal a name. In the Bible, and I wish we had time to look up all these verses; we don’t, but in the Bible, when you name something, it gives you authority over it. God allowed Adam to name the animals to give him authority over the animal kingdom. That authority continues here in the post-flood world.

It is interesting at this point, Genesis 9:3, that man now for the very first time becomes a meat eater, or carnivorous. Look at 9:3; it says: “Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant.”

This is a change in rules; something to pay attention to as you move through the Bible. The rules will change from time to time. The plan of salvation is in harmony. It is always consistent. People are always individually saved by faith alone in Christ alone; “Old Testament saints looking forward; those of us in the church age looking backward to what Jesus did. But the plan of salvation is always the same. That is a constant. But as you move through the Bible, you will see that God changes the rules concerning the outworking of His purposes.

So, prior to this point in time, man was herbivorous and not carnivorous. And now man for the very first time is given permission to eat meat. Again 9:3 says, ‘every living thing that is alive shall be food for you. For I have given all to you, as I gave the green plant.’ Very different instructions than what they had earlier. God, on the sixth day of creation, was very clear, was He not? Genesis 1:29-30:  Then God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food’ and it was so.”

And when we were teaching through that material, people were asking me, ‘Well, pastor, then why is it I always see you over at the Longhorn Steakhouse?’ And my answer is, “I don’t go to the Longhorn Steakhouse because of Genesis 1, but I go because of Genesis 9. Genesis 9 gives me that permission. Amen. And obviously this is Texas. So, we got to have a Genesis 9 somewhere, or we’re going to be in a world of trouble.”

But you must understand that prior to this point in time, herbivorous was the norm, not carnivorous. Why is that? Because the moment you have the eating of animal meat is when you have to introduce into the world a concept where animals have to be killed so they can be eaten. Now that doesn’t fit the original design of God, because in the original design of God there was no death. You have to understand this, that God originally created a world with no death in it whatsoever. Death, as the Apostle Paul calls it, is an intruder. It’s an enemy. It came into existence as a consequence of man’s rebellion against God. But it was never God’s original design. So, you cannot have a scenario where early man prior to the fall, were eating animals because that involves death.

Genesis 2:16-17 says: ”The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ’From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die (muwth).’” It’s very clear that when death enters the picture, it’s not a result of God’s design. It’s a result of man’s rebellion. And boy, did death ever enter! Genesis 3:19 is the introduction of death. It says: “By the sweat of your face [post-fall; post-sin] You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

You came right out of the dirt, and you’re going right back into the dirt from which you came. And if you monitor your pictures, particularly if you’re on social media, and all of a sudden, they bring up a picture of you from five years ago, you’ll see pretty much what I’m talking about, because you don’t look the same as you did five years ago, and neither do I. Why? Because I’m gradually being pulled back into the ground or the dirt. This isn’t what God set up the world to be. This is the consequence of sin.

Paul is very clear that death came into existence because of Adam’s sin. First Corinthians 15:21-22 says, “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”

Until Adam did what he did in Eden, there was no concept of death. It didn’t exist. Romans 5:12 is very clear. It says: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”  We don’t have death until Adam sins, and his nature is then transferred to us, and we sin. Death has now followed us into the cursed world.

When God clothed Adam and Eve for their transgression (Genesis 3:21), He clothed them with garments of skin. Where did those garments of skin come from? An animal was killed right then and there, and I think that was a complete and total shock to the thinking of Adam and Eve, because they had no concept of death, and God was teaching them right at the very beginning that sin is costly. ‘But because I am clothing you, the good news in it, we call this the gospel, you do not have to pay the cost. I will pay the cost.’ Well, who pays? The animal that was just killed to get the skin to cover you. What did the animal do wrong? Nothing! That’s the point. This is how a holy God unconditionally forgives sin and yet still maintains His holiness. If He were to say, ‘Well, you know, boys will be boys, I’ll just look the other way,’ then He’s violating His nature of holiness. Someone has to pay here. God kills an innocent animal and uses the skin from that transaction to clothe Adam and Eve. All of this, of course, is a beautiful picture pointing to what Jesus did for us on the cross 2000 years ago. He was our innocent scapegoat who died not just to show me how much God loves me; that’s part of it; but He died as my substitute. It should have been me hanging on the cross. It should have been you hanging on the cross. But He hung on the cross in our place. If you are into big words, this is what we call the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement, or atoning death of Jesus Christ. Vicarious: in the place of another; penal punishment: substitute. This is going to be costly. And the animal was killed. Adam and Eve had no idea what death was, and that no doubt was a complete shock to them because they probably figured, ‘Aw, it’s just a minor transgression. What’s the big deal?’ Oh, it is a big deal. You have just transgressed the character of a holy God. And someone has to pay here. And boom, right at the dawn of human history, God is showing the expense, or the cost associated with sin. The wonderful thing about this is that one of these days this world is going to be re-created. There will be a brand-new world. It is described in Revelation 21-22, and in that world, the very things that trouble us in our world now will absent from that world. And when that world comes onto the scene, which it will, because God cannot lie, one of the things that will be missing is death. It will be a rollback in a sense, just like to the Garden of Eden before death entered the picture.

Will man become herbivorous all over again? I don’t know, I would think so. So, enjoy your steak now while you can, I guess. It says in Revelation 21:4, “…and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there will no longer be any death. No longer will there be any mourning, or crying, or pain; for the first things have passed away.”

‘Why take a position like this? Why not just cooperate with evolutionary thought, Pastor? Why not just loosen your grip a little bit and kind of fudge on this whole death thing and carnivorous thing and herbivorous thing. I mean, what’s the big deal of saying man has always been carnivorous? The evolutionists and biology class all tell me that. Why don’t you just say that? Why don’t you just cooperate a little bit with the world system?’

I personally cannot cooperate with that belief for two reasons:

Number one, it is an attack on the character of God. If you have death in the world before the fall, then God really is not as loving as we think He is. And beyond that, when this world is re-created and we move into the eternal state, if the eternal state is going to be just like Eden, then maybe there is going to be death in that world. Because after all, the eternal state is a remodel, so to speak, on what happened in Eden with some variations mixed in. I don’t know if I want to go there if that world has the same problems in it that this world has.

So, it may seem like a minor thing, but what you see is an assault on the character of God. He’s not as merciful as we thought, and it’s also an assault on hope. You must understand something about the Bible: everything from Genesis 3 to Revelation 20, before the eternal state starts, is an abnormality. The mistake that we make is pretending that what’s happening today is normal. It has always been, and it will always be—uniformitarian thinking. I am here to tell you that is not true!

What we are experiencing now and have experienced since the fall, what we will continue to experience until the eternal state is ushered in, is abnormal. It’s something that should never have happened. Yet it did happen, and God has made provision to fix the problem. If you want to study what’s normal, don’t look at the conditions of the world today; look at Genesis 1-2– that is normal. Look at Revelation 21-22; that is normal. That is the way it is supposed to be. Everything in between is what is not supposed to be. As you’re sharing your faith with unbelievers, they will say to you, ‘Hey, God is a God of love. Who are you kidding? Look at the cancer victims in my family. Look at so and so that was hit in the crosswalk. Look at someone that is going through a financial downturn or a nasty divorce or who is addicted to drugs; don’t talk to me about your God of love when all these evil things are happening around me.’

Believe it or not, when that accusation comes your way, and it will—this is called the problem of evil, so you actually have an answer: it is an abnormality. It shouldn’t be. What’s normal is Eden. That’s normal. What’s normal is the coming New Jerusalem and the eternal state. That’s normal. Everything in between is an abnormality. Yet despite this abnormality, God actually entered into history to experience suffering in our place so that we could be saved! Now that’s a God worth worshiping! He doesn’t just sit up there in heaven saying, ‘Wow, they really goofed this one up.’ He actually does something to fix the problem, and that becomes the story of the Bible. What’s the Bible about? It can be a complicated book—it is 66 books. But let me just summarize it in a nutshell. The Bible is from a garden to a city with a cross in between. That’s the Bible. And it’s so wonderful to understand the hope that we are destined for as Christians.

But God says something else in Genesis 9:4 [now He’s giving some restrictions concerning the carnivorous change in man]. “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, it’s blood.” The consumption of blood for the sake of consuming blood is off limits. And why is that? Well, we will discover as we move through the Bible that it is going to be an injunction that comes into existence centuries later, thousands of years later, actually, in the Mosaic Covenant. In the Mosaic Covenant that God will eventually make with the nation of Israel, at this point, we don’t even know there will be an Israel,  Leviticus 17:11 says, “For for the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.”

The blood is off limits. What we see is a precursor to the Mosaic Law. Many things spoken of in the Mosaic Law have a basis in the covenant that God made with Noah. The book of Genesis reads that way. There’s something in the Mosaic Law called Levirate marriage where if the husband dies, and his widow has no children, then the deceased husband’s brother is obliged to marry her and have children with her so that the family line will not be extinguished. The ladies are saying, ‘Are you kidding me? Have you met my brother-in-law? My goodness!’   It’s an interesting thing that is in play concerning the law of Moses, not for the church age, but it’s in the law of Moses. And what you’ll see is that has actually a cultural precedent in God’s dealings with something that happens in Genesis 38. So even though the Mosaic Law doesn’t come into existence yet, there is a cultural basis already on the books for some of the things that God is going to articulate concerning the Law of Moses.

Why is the blood off limits? Arnold Fruchtenbaum summarizes as follows. He says: “This principle that the life of the flesh is in the blood is the same prohibition later incorporated into the Mosaic Law (Leviticus 3:17, 17:10-14, 7:26-27; Deuteronomy 12:15-16, 12;20-24). This prohibition will play a later role in the advice given to Gentile believers in Acts 15:29. Furthermore, [and here’s the interesting part of it] drinking blood is often connected with demonism; thus this prohibition might be, to some degree, a response to the events of Genesis 6:1-4 when intermarriage between humans and fallen angels took place.”

It’s not something to be dogmatic about. As I like to say, it’s probably not something to start a new church over, but there was heavy demonic involvement in Genesis 6; we’ve studied all about it, and it could be that the drinking of the blood had something to do with demonism. God, in the post-flood world, is saying, ‘I don’t want you to go back to what it was like before the flood, so the blood is off limits.’

He mentions here in Acts 15: “This prohibition will play a later role in the advice given to the Gentile believers in Acts 15. “Now, when you go to Acts 15, it’s an interesting passage. It’s the council at Jerusalem. They had a big powwow in Jerusalem, because at that point in church history, the church was expanding greatly, and non-Jews were getting saved. The question there was, ‘What in the world are we going to do with all these Gentiles that are now believers in the Lord Jesus Christ? I mean, should we make them part of Israel? Should we bring them under the Mosaic Law?’ The church there ruled in Acts 15. The Jewish leadership said ‘No. They’re saved. They’re part of the church. We don’t have to put them under the Law of Moses, as we Jews have been under the law of Moses for the last 1500 years.’

I really like what Peter says in Acts 15:10: “Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” Peter and James there say, ‘Hey, we’ve done a lousy job as Jews keeping the Law of Moses. Just read our history. Why would we put Gentiles under the Law of Moses? That is insanity.’

And then you have the ruling at the Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15:20: ‘…but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and what is strangled and from blood.’  Then in Acts 15:29 it says: “… that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell.”

So, it’s a rather odd ruling. ‘Are we under the Law of Moses or not? First, you tell us we’re not under the Law of Moses. Then you tell us to stay away from certain things like the consumption of blood.’ The reason James and Peter say to stay away from the blood is not because he’s putting the church back under the Law of Moses. He couldn’t be putting the church under the Law of Moses because they had just emerged, or the ruling was that they’re not under the law of Moses. He’s simply reminding them, I believe, what the Noahic covenant says: ‘Yeah, you’re not under the Law of Moses, but the Mosaic law is still worldwide and in effect, so stay away from the blood.’ That may be a better way of understanding Acts 15, the prohibition against blood. It is a reiteration of God’s covenant with Noah.

So, it is interesting that a lot of the things in the beginning of the Bible help explain alleged problems that come up in the middle of the Bible or towards the end of the Bible.

But we move now into Genesis 9:5-6, where we now see the beginning or the origin of human government. Notice 9:5-6, and here is where capital punishment comes into existence initially:  “Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.” Now look at Genesis 9:6. “Whoever sheds man’s blood By man shall his blood be shed, [well, why is that?] For in the image of God He made man.”

What you see coming into existence for the very first time is a provision that God gave to the human race in the Noahic Covenant called the Institution of Human Government. Why do we have government? We have government because of what the world was like before the flood. Do you remember what it was like? Corruption and violence swept the earth. That’s what people are like in their natural state; unless they are deterred from certain harmful and violent activities by the threat of punishment, they will do whatever their heart wants them to do. So, God says, ‘We’re going to put an end to that.’ The flood has happened. The earth is being repopulated. The nature of man hasn’t changed. So, preventing us from going back to the wild, wild west mindset, vigilantism, everyone doing what was right in their own eyes, violence and corruption sweeping the globe, we must put something in effect: the Institution of Human Government, which exists for commending those who do right and condemning those who do wrong by the threat of punishment. Of course, when you go into certain New Testament passages, you’ll see Paul the Apostle speaking along these lines. Paul didn’t invent this idea. He’s drawing from the Noahic Covenant.

Romans 13:1-7 is the classic passage on the institution of human government. Here are just a few verses from it, Romans 13:3-5. Paul, in the New Testament says, “For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it [the government] is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword [that reminds us of Genesis 9:6, doesn’t it?] for nothing; for it [government] is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.”

Why does government exist? To punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right? And if we don’t have that in effect, then you have Genesis 6 with violence and corruption sweeping the earth all over again. You know, it reminds me very much of the riots. Fortunately, by God’s grace, in 1992, I had to roughly drive right through that area of Los Angeles where those riots took place in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, and fortunately, the riots happened on a particular day of the week that I didn’t have to drive through. But I drove through that area the day before the riots broke out and the day after the riots broke out. It was stunning. What you see is how businesses that were once there had been burned to the ground. If you want to understand what the world is like without any government at all, that is the picture. Once people in those riots figured out that they weren’t going to get caught since there was a window of time when the police couldn’t get in to remedy the situation, every vile, wicked intent of man’s heart surfaced and people just walked in to department stores, broke windows, took whatever they wanted, and burned down whatever they wanted to, etc—that’s what the world is like without human government. That is what we are like in our natural state.

If I had my way, I would have whipped into church this morning at 85 miles an hour because I was running late. I know that’s surprising to some of you. ‘A pastor would run late? I can’t believe it.’ But I did not come here at 85 miles an hour, and the reason I lowered my speed is not because I’m such a great human being. I wasn’t sitting there thinking about the goodness of mankind or what can I do for my fellow man? I was thinking of my own holy trinity: me, myself, and I. But I lowered my speed anyway because I didn’t want to get a ticket. See that? But what if there was no threat of ever giving getting a ticket? I would come in at 85 miles an hour. And if I come in at 85 miles an hour, everyone else is at risk. That’s why government exists. It’s a provision of God; a blessing of God. This is why Paul calls those who work for the government ministers. You mean, a minister is not just someone who stands behind a pulpit? No.

Those who work for the government are ministers of God, and they may not even know Jesus. But they are functioning under the Noahic covenant, which God has given as a blessing to humanity. It allows the human race to be perpetuated despite its evil. We know about its evil from last week in Genesis 8:21: ‘The inclination of man’s thoughts and heart is evil from childhood.’ The flood may have fixed the outside, but it sure didn’t fix the internal heart of man. So, if man’s nature never changed post-flood as the earth is now being repopulated, how do you prevent a rerun of Genesis 6 where violence and corruption sweep the earth? Answer: a provision of God given through Noah to the whole human race, a blessing called the Institution of Human Government given in the Noahic Covenant.

So, Paul says in Romans 13, ‘Pay your taxes. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Render unto God the things that are God’s’— right out of the teachings of Jesus. Why would something be in the Bible about paying taxes? Because we’re obligated to finance or fund this institution that God created for our own good. It says in Romans 13, “Submit to government.” Because it’s there for your own good. It says to respect government; to have a high opinion of government. Wow. Now I’m stepping on toes. Why? There are a lot of people in this world who I have zero respect for because of their character, but I respect them anyway because of their office. Their office is from God. They don’t even know God. But I respect them because I respect the office, because I respect the Noahic covenant.

It’s not just Paul the Apostle who talks this way, it’s Peter as well. Peter, in his little epistle in 1 Peter 2:13-14, says: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.”

Government exists to punish those who do evil and to commend those who do right, which deters criminal activity. It deters murderers, so we submit, whenever possible, to human government. Titus 3:1 says, “Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed,…”

1 Timothy 2:1-4 tells us to pray for the government. It says: ‘First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, [specifically] for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.’

We do not want a Genesis 6 rerun. We want order in society which involves praying for those in government. I mean, it doesn’t even say here to pray for them as long as they’re Republican. Now, maybe if I come out with my authorized version of the Bible, I would put that in there. But I didn’t write the Bible. God wrote the Bible. And God tells us to pray for them first, rather than complain about them all the time, filling up their email box with complaint after complaint. By the way, it is your right as an American to complain to them. Nothing wrong with that. First, are you on your knees interceding for them? Are you praying for them because they’re functioning under a covenantal system that God Himself created for our own good? This now becomes the beginning of the United States of America. According to this particular study by Donald Lutz and Heinemann, right here at the University of Houston around 1981, they went through all the writings of the founding fathers they could find, trying to figure out that when our founding fathers were putting together government, what they were thinking about. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution was adopted, debated, and ratified in 1789, and when the Bill of rights, the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution were formally formulated in 1789, what were our founding fathers thinking about?

You know what these two secular political scientists discovered? See slide on Founders’ Sources. You can read this all for yourself in a book called The Origins of American Constitutionalism, but they were thinking about the Bible; 34%—that’s four times more than any other source. The founding fathers of the United States, imperfect people, had on their mind this Book. That’s what they were thinking about. That’s what they were talking about. That is what they were debating. They were trying to produce a government that works because they had fled the nightmare of totalitarianism in Europe.

After they were thinking about the Bible, who else were they thinking about? Well, the second most cited person, the third most cited person, the fourth most cited source, I should say, is number one, Baron Montesquieu. Number two, William Blackstone. Number three, John Locke. Baron Montesquieu: separation of powers. We must divide government up, so it does not become tyrannical. William Blackstone: inalienable rights. There are certain rights that people have that the government cannot take away—William Blackstone, John Locke: social compact theory. ‘If we’re going to come together in this state of nature,’ Locke said, ‘and create government, we have to give it certain powers, which means we have to cede certain powers to the state.’  Social compact theory—John Locke.

Do you know what Montesquieu was thinking about when our founding fathers borrowed from his writings to formulate separation of powers? He was thinking about the Bible. How do I know that? Baron Montesquieu from whom our founding fathers drew, said: “The Christian religion…is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel, is incompatible with despotic rage with which a prince punishes his subjects, and exercises himself in cruelty…[W]e shall see, that we owe to Christianity, in government, a certain political law; and in war, a certain law of nations; benefits which nature can sufficiently acknowledge.”

When our founding fathers took the writings of Montesquieu, what you should understand is that Montesquieu was thinking of Jesus. He was thinking about the Bible. He was thinking about Christianity.

What was Blackstone thinking about? Blackstone, who wrote the famous commentaries on the legal system in England and in early America, was thinking about the Bible, too. Blackstone says this: “Thus, when the Supreme Being formed the universe, and created matter out of nothing, he imposed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be…If we farther advance, from mere inactive matter to vegetable and animal life, we shall find them still governed by laws, more numerous indeed, but equally fixed and invariable…Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being…no human laws should be suffered to contradict the laws of nature and the laws of revelation.”

Understand that Blackstone’s commentaries, until very recently, were the key legal commentaries for the United States. In fact, Finney, in the Second Great Awakening, got saved while studying to be a lawyer. There were so many Scripture verses in Blackstone’s commentaries, that he got saved, and developed his conviction to be a preacher by studying to be a lawyer. How about that? And Blackstone said, ‘God has revealed Himself in two sources: creation—we would call that natural revelation, and the Bible. And the goal of going to law school and being a legislator and being a politician is to figure out what God has said in those two sources, and to come up with laws that cooperate with those two sources. In fact, if you have a law on the books that contradicts those two sources, that law should be eradicated. This is the beginning of the United States of America.’ So, it’s from Blackstone that we get this idea that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, which Thomas Jefferson put into our Declaration of Independence.

You know where our founding fathers got their ideas, according to Calvin Coolidge? By going to church. The churches in colonial America were all talking this way. And in the pews were the founding fathers who said, ‘You know, that is a good sermon. We need to take those principles and bring them into our government that we are now formulating.’

The third source that they quoted `3% of the time is a man named John Locke. John Locke gave us social compact theory. Where did Locke get his ideas from? Alvin Schmidt writes, “Locke’s theory reflects St. Paul’s Christian understanding of the natural law. Although he has been referred to as a deist, it is clear from his writings that he considered himself a Christian. In his monograph The Reasonableness of Christianity, [published] (1695), he talks about sinners being ‘restored by Christ at the resurrection.’ Frequently he also cites Scripture references in support of his arguments.”

Where did John Locke get the idea of social compact theory? He was studying the Book of Genesis. He was studying Genesis 9. That’s our passage, isn’t it?

John Eidsmoe, who is on our faculty at Chaffer Seminary, in his wonderful book, he also spoke for us at a conference a couple of years back, authored a book called Christianity and the Constitution, where he talks about John Locke. “…Locke contributed the theory of social compact, the idea that men in a state of nature realize their rights are insecure, and compact together to establish a government and cede to that government certain power so that government may use that power to secure the rest of their rights…  The social compact theory, like the covenant, allows the government only the power that God and/or people delegate. This is the cornerstone of limited government. It finds expression in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution in the Declaration of Independence which states that governments exist to secure human rights and ‘derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.’”

“Locke,” … Eidsmoe says, “frequently cited the Bible in his political writings. In his first treatise on government, he cited the Bible eighty times. [Most pastors today in their sermons don’t even cite the Bible eighty times]. Forty-two of these citations, [over 50%] are from Genesis, mostly chapters 1 and 3. Twenty-two biblical citations appear in his second treatise, in which he argued that parents have authority over children based upon the creation of Adam and Eve and their offspring. [What did Blackstone say? You don’t have laws that contradict laws of nature and laws of revelation. You don’t have laws on the books that interfere with the parent child relationship, because God is the author of the parent child relationship.] …He also argued that man has the right to possess property since God gave the earth to Adam and later to Noah. [We’re reading about that right here. Watch this.] He [that’s John Locke who America’s founding fathers drew from his wisdom] based the social compact theory, which government is established upon ’that Paction which God made with Noah after the Deluge. [John Locke got his idea of social compact theory by reading Genesis 9.] His basic doctrines of parental authority, private property, and social compact were based on the historical existence of Adam and Noah.”

My goodness, the man believed in a historical Adam and a historical Noah. And he got to Genesis 9, and saw what God had done through the Noahic covenant, and he says, ‘Now that we’re in the business here in the United States of coming up with a form of government, let’s come up with social compact theory, which he got from the Bible, and our founding fathers reached back into the writings of Locke, reached back into the writings of Montesquieu, reached back into the writings of Blackstone and grabbed all of these ideas and brought them into public life.

America’s existence came governmentally and nationally because America’s founding fathers studied the Bible. They studied the Bible directly, and when they weren’t studying the Bible directly, they were studying men who had been influenced by the Bible. ‘Well, why, Pastor, go into all of this detail?’  Because the whole thing is being taken apart today, and people have no idea what they’re trampling on. They are trampling on one of the highest and greatest gifts that have ever come to the human race: the American Constitution, because around the world as I speak, and this has always been the case, the default mode is totalitarianism. Our founders said, ’You know, we’re not perfect people,’ by the way, God doesn’t use perfect people because they don’t exist. Everybody that wants to drag out all the skeletons in our founding fathers, could do that in our lives too, couldn’t they? We all have skeletons in our closet. We all have areas that aren’t right, but they love Jesus. Were all of them saved? I don’t know, I would think a lot of them probably were. But even the ones that weren’t saved, I would say they were consciously biblical. They had respect for the Bible. They weren’t there to tear it down and to remove it from public life. Far from that, they were looking at it, and at people who had been influenced by it. They were trying to come up with something that would not be totalitarian, which has been the default mode all throughout human history. It is what they had fled from.

And my goodness, I’m out of time. This is the United States of America. The United States of America comes out of Genesis 9. Other sources, but Genesis 9. Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘Gosh, you’ve given us all this teaching about how government exists to punish those who do evil and commend those who do, right. What about this scenario, Pastor? What about if the government starts to do the opposite? What about if the government starts to punish the good doers and commend the evil doers, and loses the purpose that God gave it? Like in Canada.’

Canada is just on our northern border, folks. Here is a recent article:  Canadian Police Barricade a Church at the Entrance with Fencing, Tarps to Keep Worshipers Out. That is a government gone astray. That is a government that’s not only not protecting inalienable rights but stomping on them. ‘And you gave us all these verses about submission to government, respect government, and pay your taxes. What do we do now?’  I’m glad you asked that question because I’m going to try to answer it next week. That’s my tease to bring you back for the next show. But this is more than a show, right? This is the Word of God.

The truth of the matter is, Jesus entered our world to pay a terrible price in our place. And by trusting what He did, we can have eternal life. That’s the gospel. The Bible is a book about how to get to heaven. Yes, it has a lot to say about government, but its primary purpose is to save the soul. If you find yourself unsaved today, our exhortation here at Sugar Land Bible Church is to trust in the completed transaction of Jesus Christ. Place your faith in Him, not in yourselves, not in your good works, but in what He did. He who said, “It is finished” and in a nanosecond, by receiving that gift, you are made just as righteous positionally as Jesus Christ Himself. Don’t hold out for a better offer because you are not going to get one. So, anyone within the sound of my voice who needs and wants to do this as the Spirit convicts them, we invite you to do that now, even as I’m speaking. It’s not a matter of joining a church, walking an aisle, giving money. It’s a matter of privacy between you and the Lord, where you’re convicted of your lost condition, so you trust in Christ as your Savior. Christianity is not a 12-step program. It is a one-step program. That’s the only condition that God requires. If it’s something that you need more of an explanation on, I’m available after the service to talk. Shall we pray?

Father, we’re grateful for Genesis 9 and just the things that it instructs us about, right down to the origins of this wonderful country that we live in that’s given us so much opportunity. We know that those things are not an accident. These are your handiwork as the greats of the past relied upon your truth. Help us to walk these things out this week. We’ll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. And God’s people said. AMEN!