Sean C. Capparuccia

20 September 2026

Sermon XIV in the Genesis series

Genesis 9:1–17; Romans 8:18–23; Psalm 103; Matthew 26:26–29

Here in chapter 9 we get deeper into the covenant that God made with Noah. I remind you from last week that a covenant “refers to an act of God in freely establishing a mutually binding relationship with humankind.”^[1] A covenant includes the terms that are binding on both parties: the things God will do, and the things that man is expected to do. Some of the covenants that God made with His people were difficult, like the one with Israel under Moses, and some were easy, like this one under Noah. In the Matthew passage, at the Lord’s Supper, we see another covenant when Jesus said, “…This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). And, of course, this is the more important covenant. So how does the Noahic covenant fit with the New Covenant?

Last week, we spent some time in Genesis 8 looking at Noah coming out of the ark, and we saw the connection between that passage and baptism. We talked about God’s deliverance, God’s faithfulness, and God’s covenant promises. Genesis 9 takes us one step further, because after Noah came out of the ark, God didn’t simply tell him, “Well, Noah, you made it. Good luck to you and the wife and kids.”  No, God establishes a covenant with Noah. So, let’s look carefully at what that covenant actually says.

Genesis 9:8 says: “Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you.’” Notice that God wasn’t making a deal with Noah; He wasn’t saying, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” He said, “I establish My covenant.”

Next, notice who is included in this covenant: Noah, his descendants, and every living creature. All creation is included. So, this is a covenant that reaches beyond one family (as with Adam), beyond one nation (as with Moses), and even beyond humanity. It reaches into creation itself.

Perhaps the easiest takeaway from this chapter is simply the rainbow.

We see a rainbow and we say, “That’s God’s promise that He won’t flood the earth again.” And that’s true. But this covenant is unconditional in that it doesn’t depend on what man does. The rainbow is for everybody and everything: you don’t have to believe in God in order to not be flooded again. Creation will not be flooded again.

But there is something much bigger happening here. Not only is God saying, “I won’t flood the world again,” He is saying, “I am going to preserve the world.” The Flood has ended; judgment has come; the terrible sins have been judged, but humanity has not been destroyed.

So, does sin not matter anymore to God? Of course not. In fact, Genesis 9 is going to show us just how much sin still matters. Noah got off the ark (and worshipped), and then he planted a vineyard. Then he took all those grapes, the ones Mrs. Noah didn’t use for making jams and jelly’s, and he made wine and he got drunk. And so we discover that while the Flood wiped out 99.999% of all living beings, it did not eradicate sin from the earth. Why? Because the problem was still inside Noah and his family. It got on the ark with them, it rode out the flood with them, and it got off the ark with them.

The Flood washed the world, but it didn’t wash all the sin out of Noah’s heart.

And that is important to understand. God’s covenant with Noah does not say, “Humanity is now perfect.” It says, “I will preserve humanity and creation in spite of human sin.” And that preservation is enormously important because God’s plan of redemption – decreed by God before the creation of the world – is not finished. How could it be!? Do we see Satan’s head crushed here? Do we see the offspring of the woman victorious over Satan? The Flood renewed the earth, but it did not redeem humanity.

God had made promises that will eventually lead us all the way to Jesus Christ.

The world and history must continue; children must be born. Nations must be born. And eventually, in the fullness of time, a young woman named Mary will give birth to a Son.

And that Son, Jesus, will be the fulfillment of God’s redemptive purposes.

So, even though the Noahic covenant is not the Gospel, it prepares the world for the Gospel. God preserves the stage upon which His great work of redemption will take place.

The Rainbow

And then God gives Noah – and all creation with him – a sign.

:13       God says, “I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.”  We call it a rainbow, and whenever God sees that bow, He says He will remember His covenant. And as we said, when the Bible says God “remembers,” it’s not because He forgets; it means that He acts according to His covenant promise. God is saying: “I will be faithful to what I have promised.” And that is one of the great themes that runs through the entire Bible: God keeps His promises.

That’s what we need to understand about covenant. A covenant begins with the character and faithfulness of God. And that brings us to the question: what changes when we get from Noah to Jesus? Because despite what some people have believed, the New Covenant doesn’t simply erase everything that came before it; there are things that remain in effect. God is still the Creator; we are still His creatures; God’s world is still God’s world; human beings are still made in God’s image.

Genesis 9:6 says: “For God made man in His own image.” This is a repeat of Genesis 1:27 just to make sure everyone still understood that even after the Flood, mankind was still made in the image of God.

The Fall did not destroy the image of God in humanity: it damaged us, it corrupted us, it twisted our desires and brought death into the world. But human beings still bear the image of their Creator. That’s why human life has dignity. That’s why the unborn child matters; that’s why the elderly person matters; that’s why the disabled person matters; it’s why the terminally ill matter; and that’s why even your enemy matters, at least a little. Beloved, that’s why the person whom nobody else seems to care about still matters – because we are dealing with creatures made in the image of God. That hasn’t changed. But something has indeed changed, and this is where the Gospel becomes amazing. The Noahic covenant says, “I will preserve creation,” and the New Covenant says something even greater: “I will redeem creation.”

Listen to Jesus in Matthew 26: He takes the cup, the third cup of the Passover meal which is the cup of salvation, and He says: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Do you see the difference?

In Genesis 9, God promises that He won’t destroy the earth with another flood. – an unconditional covenant with all mankind.  In Matthew 26, Jesus says that His own blood will be poured out for the forgiveness of the sins of many – a conditional covenant that applies to all who put their trust in Jesus and believe on His saving name.

 The Noahic covenant preserves life; the New Covenant transforms lives. The Noahic covenant restrains judgment for sin; the New Covenant deals with sin through forgiveness. The Noahic covenant says that creation will continue; the New Covenant promises that creation itself will ultimately be renewed. Not washed and re-molded, but re-created.

And that is where Romans 8 comes in. Paul says: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.”  Think of the scope of that  statement. If Paul had meant “humanity waits” or “the Jews wait” that might make more sense. But Paul says all creation is waiting; creation is groaning. All this creation which has been subjected to futility and is in bondage to corruption is waiting to be set free. And again, we usually think about creation in terms of the earth – everything down here. Trees, mountains, oceans, the animals. All that is within our reach. And certainly, those things are part of what Paul has in mind, but Paul uses remarkably broad language when he talks about creation. And this raises an intriguing question. I’ve told you before how I love to look at the stars and wonder about the vastness of the universe. But when we look up, what exactly are we looking at? Stars, planets, galaxies, and with what we know today verses a couple hundred years ago and with exponentially more powerful telescopes, we know that the universe is vastly larger than the ancient world ever imagined. There are billions of galaxies. More stars than we can practically comprehend. Objects in space and solar systems that we have just begun to see and understand. And I know that Paul isn’t trying to teach us astronomy here in Romans 8 – he doesn’t specifically say, “Every galaxy and every planet will be redeemed.” So, we can’t say that he does. But, Beloved, he does say “the whole creation.” And that gives us something tremendous to contemplate. Perhaps God’s redemptive purposes are even bigger than we have imagined. We must remember that when Adam sinned, all creation was subjected to sin and death. Trees die and supernovas explode because of Adam’s sin against God.

The Bible begins with, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

And then the Bible ends with God making all things new; a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21:1). And between those two statements is the story of sin, judgment, covenant, redemption, and finally, restoration. And though we love our songs about “heaven’s blissful shore” and “the roll called up yonder,” our faith is not ultimately about escaping God’s creation. Christianity isn’t about leaving this world; it’s more about the redemption of God’s creation.

That’s why the Christian hope is not simply, “When I die, my soul goes to heaven.” That’s true as far as it goes, but that’s not the end of the Christian story. The end of the story is resurrection, the very redemption of our bodies, the defeat of death, and the renewal of creation. It’s about the final triumph, the final victory, of Jesus Christ.

Paul says in Romans 8 that creation is waiting for the revealing of the sons of God, and then he says that we ourselves are waiting. When reading Scripture, we must pay careful attention to the pronouns. It is very important to know to whom the author is speaking; or about whom. Sometimes it’s easy to understand, and sometimes it is so difficult that an entire doctrine can be changed by how we interpret one pronoun.[2] The Apostle says, “We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Who is the ‘we’ here? It is all believers. And, as one commentator said, “Who would not eagerly look forward to this grand event in which we experience the completion of the fierce battle with sin, the cessation of suffering and persecution, and our vindication?”[3]

In the Greek there are two words that mean body: one is sarx which means the “flesh” or “meat,” and the other is soma which means “the body as a whole.”  When talking about our sinful flesh, the New Testament generally uses sarx.[4] But the soma is the whole person, the complete person. When we come to faith in Christ, our sarx is put to death, or at least it is given the fatal poison that begins its journey toward death. And at the end of the age, our soma, presumably long decayed in the ground, will be resurrected, revived, and restored. We won’t be disembodied spirits floating around forever.

Resurrection.

God doesn’t throw away what He created, He redeems it. Even with the Flood, He didn’t just destroy the earth and throw it away. He washed it (albeit, thoroughly), dried it, and gave it a new look. And part of that “new look” was the covenant with Noah and those who came after him. Let’s briefly look at this covenant with Noah.

1. Just as with Adam, they were to multiply and fill the earth (vs. 1). You don’t see anything in there about population control, do you?[5]

2. With Adam, all living things were vegetarian; now, humans get to eat animals. (And animals get to eat animals, too.) So, this was a win for red-blooded Americans, and a big loss for P.E.T.A.) But the eating or drinking of blood was – and is – forbidden. Life is in the blood. 

3. But in verse 5 we have something new, too. For the crime of murder, even from animals, there will be blood for blood, life for life. The sacredness of human life is here established. This is the basis of all ours laws governing murder in whatever degree it is committed. It is also the basis of the death penalty which some, Christians even, are adamantly opposed to. In their mind, all life is sacred “from conception to natural death.” I won’t belabor that point this morning, except to say that the Noahic covenant is still in force. !

4. This covenant is for all humanity and every living creature (vss.9-10).

5. The promise to never destroy the earth again by flood is given and the rainbow is given as a sign of this promise. There is nothing in scripture to indicate that the rainbow was something new in the world. While some propose a theory that there had not been any rain until the Flood, but all water came from beneath the ground, scripture does not explicitly say that. So, assuming it had rained, the rainbow is now seen as a sign and symbol of God’s promise. He took something that was there, and turned it into a way of remembering something He had done. Do we see that anywhere else, I wonder? Obviously, people had been washed and even baptized before Christ turned it into Christian baptism; and He took common bread and wine and turned them into a remembrance  – if not more – of His death.

Flesh

            It is interesting that with this covenant with Noah, there is emphasis on “flesh.” Human flesh with human flesh ; animal flesh with human flesh; God with “all flesh.”    

And if you look at the Psalm we read, Psalm 103, you get a glimpse of the character of the God who makes these covenants. In the Psalm, David says:

“The Lord is merciful and gracious; [He is] slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

And then he says: “For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.

As for man, his days are like grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourishes.

When the wind has passed over it, it is gone; and its place acknowledges it no longer” (Psalm 103:14-16).

It takes me back to Ash Wednesday. “All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Eccles. 3:20) We are but dust, so, as Paul instructs us, don’t think of yourself any more highly that you ought! (Rom. 12:3). We are but dust, and yet God has mercy upon us. That is the amazing thing about the covenanting God. He knows exactly what we are; He knows exactly what we have done; He knows all our weaknesses, our sins, our failures; He knows how prone we are to wander and still He makes promises, shows mercy, and remembers His covenant.

And lest anyone get too caught up in the idea that flesh is bad and spirit is good – there’s a heresy in there – our God of covenant does something even more amazing: He enters creation in the flesh. The One who made the dust becomes flesh made from dust and walks among us. His flesh ate, drank, suffered, and went to the cross.

And on the night before He died, He took a cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood.”  The rainbow was a sign of covenant mercy; the cup is a sign of covenant redemption.

The rainbow tells us God will preserve His creation; the cross tells us God will redeem His people. And the resurrection tells us God will finish what He started. There are multiple covenants in history but only one God. The New Covenant doesn’t mean God suddenly became a different God. The God of Noah is the God of Abraham who is the God of Moses who is the God of David, who is the God who sent His Son.[6]

And the God who sent His Son is the God who will one day make all things new.

But God does not change, and that is the wonderful truth behind all of this. The covenant changes, but the covenant God does not; He cannot. We have His promise that life will be preserved until the very end of time, which is reassuring. Life will go on. But what is even better is that in Christ, God accomplishes redemption. Life doesn’t simply “go on” as if in some pointless and arbitrary manner. In Christ, life is fully realized.

            Brothers and sisters, there are a lot of “dead” people walking around. Oh, they look alive, but they are spiritually dead. And unless you remember being “dead” yourself, you may not truly grasp the life that these people are missing. But the Bible tells us that we were all dead. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life. That life is redemption; and that redemption reaches farther than we sometimes realize. It reaches into your heart.

It reaches into your family. Into the Church. It reaches into your body, because even your body will be redeemed. And Romans 8 says that somehow, mysteriously, it reaches into creation itself. “Creation is groaning,” it says. And if you listen, you can hear it. You hear it in sickness, and in death; in earthquakes and storms; you hear it in broken bodies and addicted bodies, and in broken families. Whenever something that God created good is twisted by sin, you can hear it. Creation is groaning.

But the good news is that groaning is not the same thing as dying without hope. Labor pains end with new life. The Apostle Paul uses that very image. Creation is groaning as in the pains of childbirth (Rom. 8:22). Something is coming, something is on the way. The children of God are going to be revealed and our bodies will be redeemed. All creation will be set free from its bondage to corruption and Christ will be revealed as King.

So what does Genesis 9 say to us today? First of all, it says, God faithfully fulfills His promises. The rainbow wasn’t Noah’s promise to God; it was God’s promise to Noah. And that is good news for us because our hope isn’t ultimately based on how well we hold onto God, our hope is based on how faithfully He holds onto us.

And then Genesis 9 tells us that God is not finished with creation. He preserves it, sustains it and works in and through it, and through Christ, He redeems it.

So whenever you see a rainbow, remember the faithfulness of God. Whenever you wash your face, as Martin Luther said, remember your baptism. And whenever you come to the Lord’s Table, remember the blood of the covenant. That is, the water that washes and the blood that cleanses. When you look at your own life and see weakness and failure, remember Psalm 103: “He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”

And when you look at a world that seems to be falling apart, remember Romans 8: all creation is groaning.

But also remember that creation is waiting, the Church is waiting, and Beloved, we are waiting, for the redemption of our bodies and for the revealing of the sons of God.

Waiting for the day when corruption and decay will end and all things made new. The God who made a covenant with Noah has now established a New Covenant through the blood of His Son and He will keep it. He has kept every promise that has brought us this far and faith tells us that He will keep every promise that remains.

So, we don’t look at the rainbow merely as a pretty thing in the sky made by the refraction of light; we look at it and remember that God keeps His covenant.

And we don’t come to the Lord’s Table merely to remember something that happened long ago, we come remembering that Christ has shed His blood for the forgiveness of our sins, in fulfillment of His promises to His people, and that He is truly present with us through His Holy Spirit.  

            And so, the present is not something to dread nor is the future something to fear. We live in hope, the hope of the Resurrection, because one day all groaning will end. No more waiting, no more corruption. No more death. For all who are truly in Christ there will be Redemption, Resurrection, and Restoration.

And glory.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sing Great Is Thy Faithfulness #44

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[1] Stanley J. Grenz, et al., “covenant” in Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999).

[2] For example, Mt. 16:19, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Clearly Jesus was speaking to Peter here. But then in Mt. 18:18, Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Was this also to Peter? No, it was plural – to the Disciples, not strictly Peter.

[3] J. V. Fesko, Romans  The Lectio Continua Expository Commentary on the New Testament, Joel R. Beeke and Jon D. Payne, eds. (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018),211.

[4] For an in-depth treatment of sarx and soma, see “Let’s Talk About Sarx! When Paul criticized ‘the flesh’ he wasn’t being body-negative” March 19, 2019  https://www.workthegreymatter.com/flesh-paul-sarx-not-sex-negative/,  accessed 19 September 2026.

[5] Rev. Thomas, in the 1700s,  wrote extensively on a philosophy of population control based on the idea that  the more people there are, the less resources there will be for the people who deserve it. This was picked up by Darwin, of course, and since it then has had many proponents: Rockefeller, Ford, Sanger, Gates, Biden, to name a few.

[6] See last week’s sermon, “God Remembered Noah” where we briefly looked at the covenants in Scripture: Edenic, Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New Covenant (Messianic).