Category: Noach

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God’s Attributes Revealed in Creation

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Romans 1:19-20 ESV

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Romans 1:19-20 ESV

Nobody can look at the natural world without thinking that there must be a Creator. As Hebrews 3:4 says, “Every house is built by someone.” Numerous aspects of the palace of the natural world strongly imply the existence of a Creator a purpose:

  • Individual Complexity – The internal complexity of living things and the intricate balance of systems within systems requires a designer of extraordinary intelligence and foresight. Every lifeform is a self-repairing, self-replicating machine that becomes more complex, the closer you examine it, from the outer defenses of skin and bark all the way down to molecular factories beyond anything man has been able to copy with all of our technology. Individual organisms are so complex, even at the molecular level, that removing any one of thousands of different components or sub-systems will destroy the entire organism, yet those systems themselves are self-policing, removing, replacing, or repairing damaged components before they can cause significant harm. See Psalm 139:14.
  • Biome Complexity – The interplay between organisms, even across species, also testifies to the existence of an intelligent, deliberate creator. Trees warn each other of danger. Viruses, bacteria, fungi, grasses, herbivores, and the most complex predators all cooperate, without any apparent conscious intention, to feed each other and keep ecosystems healthy. As local conditions change, local lifeforms adjust populations, habitats, and even genetic expression to compensate. See Job 38:39-41.
  • Universal Fine Tuning – Physics demonstrates that our entire universe seems designed at every level to support life. A slight change in any number of values–some of which I could name, but won’t pretend to understand–would change the universe in such a way that life would become impossible. Stars and planets would cease to exist, let alone the minerals, seas, and atmosphere required by living organisms.  See Psalm 19:1.

In the face of the overwhelming evidence for a Creator, his existence can only be denied by deliberate, continuous rejection and indoctrination. A child, left to himself, would assume that everything was created, and he must be trained to think otherwise.

One implication of this truth is that a person can attain a very basic knowledge of God’s identity without ever hearing the words YHWH, Jesus, Yeshua, Gospel, etc. All of those things are knowable, at least in conception, through the honest observation of Creation. If there is a Creator, then he has a purpose in creating. If he has a purpose for Creation, then he has a purpose for individual creatures. If he has a purpose for individual creatures, then he desires them to behave according to his plan. If his creatures will not behave according to his plan, then they should expect to be corrected, destroyed, or isolated so that they can’t interfere with the correct operation of the rest of Creation. Creatures who choose to act according to the Creator’s purposes can reasonably expect to be rewarded, although the Creator is under no obligation to do so. All of Creation, including every individual creature, belongs to the Creator and is dependent on him for its continued existence, and he is fully within his rights to use it however he wills, including destroying it.

Acceptance of the inevitability of God is in some ways more important than an academic knowledge about God, because a great deal can be learned of God’s character from the nature of what he has already done, apart from any special revelation or divinely inspired writings. As Job 12:7-9 says, “ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of YHWH has done this?”

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Did God’s Food Laws Change After the Flood?

Did God change the laws about clean and unclean animals after the flood? Is kosher for the Christian?

Being a Torah observant follower of Yeshua (aka Jesus) means living according to God’s instructions as given to Moses (aka Torah) and as illustrated and explained by Yeshua, including those rules that pertain to diet. Food is a very personal thing and other Christians are frequently dumbfounded that I don’t agree with them that God’s rules for eating were canceled by Jesus. Just read Mark! Read Romans! Haven’t you read Galatians!? Etc. Pick a New Testament book and there’s probably a verse in it that someone will interpret to mean that God no longer cares what anyone eats. I am convinced beyond any doubt that the vast majority of people–even well-educated and sincere believers in Jesus–have never even considered that those verses might be interpreted in some other way, let alone done any serious study on the matter.

American Torah (and other websites that have published my articles) holds other articles on this topic, but the same “counter” verses come up often enough that I think it’s worthwhile to the most common, including what they say and what they are claimed to say. I don’t have the time or inclination to address every possible relevant Bible passage, of course, but I hope that I will be able to add something useful to the collective dialog and encourage you to reconsider what you have been taught or what you might assume about others.

I will add the tag “kosher” to this and other articles on this topic so that you can easily find them here at American Torah and over at Soil from Stone.

And I will begin with The Beginning, Genesis…

And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.
Genesis 1:29

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.
Genesis 9:3

When God first created man in the Garden, he gave Adam permission to eat plants (“every herb bearing seed” in the KJV), but then after he destroyed the world in the Flood, he gave Noah permission to eat animals (“every moving thing that lives” in the KJV).

This raises two questions: 

  1. Did God’s Law change after the Flood?
  2. If God changed the rules once, could he change them again?

God told Noah he could eat every living thing. Doesn’t that mean we can eat pigs and lobsters?

“Every plant yielding seed” and “every thing that lives” are descriptions of categories. In other words, God gave Adam permission to eat from the category of all seed-bearing plants and he gave Noah permission to eat from the category of all living things, but he did not mean for either of them to understand that they could eat absolutely any and every member of those categories.

If you get your drivers license and I tell you, “Congratulations! You can drive all kinds of cars now,” do I really mean that you are free to drive any and every motor vehicle you can find? No, because not every vehicle is yours, some vehicles require special licenses and training, and other vehicles are illegal to drive on regular roads. I think these two Genesis phrases would have been better translated as “the seed-bearing plants” and “the living things” to convey the intended meaning.

Leviticus 11:3 says, “Whatever parts the hoof and is cloven-footed and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat.” Does that mean that every cow is available for food to anyone? Clearly not. God did not give anyone permission to kill and eat his neighbor’s cow.

Let me give you a scenario as an illustration.

Your town has an ordinance against driving 18 wheelers on any streets within town limits. You don’t own an 18 wheeler, but your neighbor does. Are you allowed to drive his 18 wheeler on a country road without his permission? No, you aren’t. Not because of the town law–that doesn’t apply on country roads–but because it’s not your truck.

Now, if you take it into your head to become a long haul truck driver, you can get your CDL and purchase your neighbor’s rig. Then you will be free to drive it on that country road, but still not in town, not because it is illegal for you to drive an 18 wheeler, but because it remains illegal to drive it in town. If your neighbor had only loaned you his truck, instead of selling it, with the condition that you can only drive it downtown, you would be no more legally authorized to drive it than before, because his consent in the matter has no effect at all on the town’s ordinance against 18 wheelers within town limits.

Before the Flood, before God allowed Noah to eat animals, he told Noah to take seven pairs of every kind of clean animal into the Ark with him (Genesis 7:3), so God’s laws concerning what makes an animal clean or unclean existed and were in force at that time. God’s laws concerning what makes an animal edible to humans are identical to those that distinguish clean from unclean, and so it seems to me that those laws were also in force prior to the Flood, prior to God granting Noah permission to eat animals.

On the sixth day of Creation, he gave the Garden into Adam’s custody, but not for every purpose that Adam might desire. Adam’s responsibilities as a gardener allowed him to prune and harvest the trees, but not to burn the whole place down. Everything belongs to God, every rock, tree, animal, and person. Before the Flood, cows and sheep were perfectly edible to humans, but they belong to God, and God was (and is) free to disallow mankind to kill his cattle for food, not because it is immoral to eat a cow, but because it is immoral to eat someone else’s cow.

God’s instructions to Noah were not a change in his eternal Law that says “You may eat this kind of animal, but not that kind.” Rather, they were a change in how much authority over his own possessions God had delegated to mankind, much like a farmer allowing his hired hands to take a few chickens home with them in addition to their daily allotment from the harvest.

If God changed the rules about what we can eat once, could he change them again?

Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 are the primary passages of Torah that tell us which animals are clean and therefore suitable for food. (See this article for a brief explanation of what clean and unclean means.) God’s Laws concerning clean and unclean animals predate Noah, Abraham, and Moses and haven’t changed.

But if God can change the wages of mankind from plants alone to plants and animals, can he also reduce those wages again to plants only? Or to animals only?

I don’t see any reason why he couldn’t. They and we are all his creations to do with as he chooses.

However, he would need to send a prophet to tell us of the change in such a way that nobody would have any excuse for not recognizing his authority and the truth of his message. The last two times God sent such a message, the prophet who delivered it was the supreme, unquestioned human authority on earth. I am unaware of a single human being in over 1900 years whom I could point to as a certain and true prophet, let alone one with such unimpeachable credentials. If a prophet carried a word from God that was so fundamental to human existence as the revocation of permission to eat animals, surely it would have to be delivered in a similar manner to the original granting of permission.

Perhaps when Messiah Yeshua returns to establish his earthly kingdom in the land of Israel, he will make such a decree. I doubt it, but who am I to say?

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Parsha Noach – Apostolic Readings, Commentary, and Videos

New Testament readings to study with Torah portion Noach, Genesis 6:9-11:32, plus links to commentary and videos.

Readings

  • Genesis 6:9-7:24
    • Matthew 24:1-25:30
    • Luke 17:20-37
    • Romans 1:8-2:29
    • Hebrews 11:6-7
    • 1 Peter 3:17-22
    • 2 Peter 2:4-3:13
  • Genesis 8:1-14
    • Galatians 6:1-10
    • Hebrews 12:3-17
  • Genesis 8:15-9:17
    • John 16:25-33
    • 2 Peter 3:14-18
  • Genesis 9:18-10:32
    • Luke 1:5-17
    • 1 Corinthians 6:5-11
    • 1 Timothy 1:8-11
  • Genesis 11:1-32
    • Matthew 25:31-46
    • Acts 2
    • Acts 7:2-4
    • Revelation 21:23-27

Additional Reading

Videos Related to Parsha Noach

  • Noach and the 8 Elements of a Covenant – God’s covenants appear to be made up of 8 major elements. His covenant with Noah in Genesis 6-9 is a great illustration.
  • Apostacy, False Prophets, and the Gospel in Mathew 24 – We are living in dark times. Churches are teaching anti-Christ doctrines, false prophets are multiplying, lawlessness is everywhere, and nobody seems to know what the Gospel is. Our job is to keep preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom (which might not be what you think!) and to persevere in faithful obedience until the end.
  • Has the Abomination of Desolation in Matthew 24 Already Happened? – Yeshua said that, when we see the Abomination of Desolation prophesied in Daniel 11:31, those in Judea should immediately flee to the mountains, that the greatest tribulation mankind has ever seen is about to begin. There are four general ways to interpret all Biblical prophecy, but only one of them fits what Yeshua said in this chapter.
  • Don’t Be Deceived – Matthew 24:23-28 – Yeshua said that his second coming will be like lightning in the sky. Everyone will see it. How can you avoid being deceived by counterfeits? By knowing the real thing. Yeshua isn’t just a miracle worker. He forgives sins, keeps and teaches the commandments, keeps the Sabbath, defends the weak, and rebukes oppressors and the perverse. If you want to be sure you know the Messiah when he comes, study his life and the signs he warned us about.
  • Sun, Moon, Stars, and the Sign of the Son of Man in Matthew 24:29-31 – Letting the Bible define its own terms can really help make sense of difficult passages like this one. Where else does the Bible talk about the sun, moon, and stars going dark, especially as it relates to prophecy? Most notably in Isaiah 11, 13, 24, Zechariah, and Revelation.
  • No One Knows the Day and Hour, Matthew 24:32-51 – Understanding who wrote a book of the Bible and why can really help you understand the book itself. In our first week looking at Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, I talk about Paul’s history up to this point and what was happening in his life and in Rome that prompted him to write.
  • The Dangers of Wine and Kings in Proverbs 20:1-2 – These two verses are arranged in a parallelism that illustrates how all alcohol and government are both dangerous servants and fearful masters. In the wrong context, at the wrong time, or too much of either one can do far more harm than good.
  • Pride Invites Destruction – Proverbs 16:18 – Pride doesn’t just come before a fall; it invites it by drawing God’s ire. If you want to leave a lasting legacy, humble yourself and align your goals with God’s.
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Yeshua, Our Great Atonement

Whenever you see the numbers 4 or 40 in scripture, I suspect that you will find some lesson about the Messiah nearby.

  • The fourth day of creation brought lights to rule the heavens.
  • Esau, a type of antichrist, married two Hittite women when he was forty years old, a pre-figuring counterfeit of Jacob.
  • Jacob was mourned for forty days.
  • Israel ate manna, bread from Heaven, in the wilderness for forty years.

There are probably dozens of other examples, but Noah and the flood is one of the best known. The rains fell for forty days and nights. One clear connection between the Flood and the Messiah is in the salvation of Noah and his family, as well as the means of that salvation.

There are three words in Genesis 6:14 that are directly connected with the atonement of Yeshua.

  • Gopher – גּפר (gofer)
  • Cover – כּפר (kafar)
  • Pitch – כּפר (kofer)

Since vowel points weren’t added to Hebrew for two thousand years after the Torah was first written down, the only difference between these words in print is the gimel (hard g sound) in gopher versus the kof (k sound) in the other two words. Otherwise all three words are spelled the same. The puns are clearly intentional.

What makes this even more interesting to me is that kafar (cover) and kofer (pitch) are also identical in spelling to the Hebrew for atonement: kippur. (The F and P sounds are represented by the same Hebrew letter, peh.) Kippur is the root of kapporet, which is Hebrew for mercy seat*. See Exodus 25:17 and 30:10 among many other verses.

These particular words (gofer, kafar, kofer) were used in Genesis 6:14 as a deliberate allusion to atonement.

Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. (ESV)

Make yourself an ark of atonement wood. Make rooms in the ark, and atone it inside and out with atonement.

Noah’s ark was covered with pitch to shelter the survivors from God’s wrath, while Moses’ ark was covered with the mercy seat to be a buffer between us and God’s overwhelming presence. The first ark contained God’s chosen people and miraculously provided sustenance. The Ark of the Covenant contained emblems of God’s Law (the stone tablets), guidance (Aaron’s staff), and sustenance (manna), all given to God’s people and carried by them through the Wilderness.

Messiah Yeshua is the atonement which carried Noah through the flood by which the earth was cleansed of violence and tyranny. Ultimately, he is the atonement, which carries us through Death itself to be resurrected and to stand before the Judgment Seat of God. He will cover us and carry us through that as well.

Back to the numbers…

Noah’s Ark protected its inhabitants through forty days and nights of rain that eventually covered the whole earth, crushing and drowning millions, possibly billions of people. How can such unimaginable destruction contain a teaching on the Messiah?

One of the most profound truths of the Messiah is that he not only saves us from death, but he saves us by and through death.

We cannot approach God directly in our sinful, corrupted state. We need atonement to cover up our stench. The blood of bulls, goats, lambs, and doves was offered on the altar and on the mercy seat as a temporary atonement, but Yeshua’s blood atones for our sins more completely than that of any animal. His blood makes a permanent atonement that cleanses not only our flesh, but our spirits from all taint of sin.

Through Yeshua’s death, we have been enabled to live eternally, but we must pass through death ourselves to obtain it, just like Noah and his family had to pass through the rains in order to be saved from the destruction that took the rest of the world.

Messiah is the atonement which carried Noah through the flood by which the earth was cleansed of violence and tyranny. Ultimately, he is the atonement which carries us through Death itself so that we may be resurrected to stand before the Judgment Seat of God. He will cover us and carry us through that as well.

Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
Revelation 7:15

Yeshua doesn’t always save us from trials, but he does save us through them. Our faith and mettle is tried continually by flood and fire and death, and his atonement will never fail us. We will come through the other side one day with a trove of refined spiritual gold, silver, and jewels in exchange for our own faithfulness.

* “Mercy seat” is a terrible translation of kapporet. Although the cover of the Ark of the Covenant could be considered the seat or center of God’s mercy, “covering” would be a much better translation.

 

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The Real Difference Between the Righteous and the Wicked

The Scriptures call Noah, Abraham, and David righteous men, but Paul said that “all our righteousness is as filthy rags.” The Biblical narratives of these men illustrates Paul’s point very well:

The second thing Noah did when he got off the boat was to plant a vineyard so he could get drunk. (You have to give him props for patience and long-term planning.) When push came to shove, Abraham lied and gave up his wife in order to save his own skin. And who can forget the story of David and Bathsheba? Over the preceding decades, he killed hundreds of men with his own hands and then topped it off by stealing a friend’s wife and having the friend killed to cover up his adultery.

After all that, how can Scripture call them righteous men, “a friend of God”, and “a man after God’s own heart”?

Psalm 32, written by David, is a chiastic song (see here for an explanation of chiasms) that helps us understand this seeming contradiction.

A chiasm in Psalm 32

  • A – V1-2 Blessed is the forgiven who honestly repents
    • B – V3-4 Living in unrepented, unconfessed sin is oppressive to a righteous man
      • C – V5 I determined to confess (speech) and I will be forgiven.
        • D – V6-7 Let the righteous pray to God before it is too late. God will save them.
      • C – V8 Let me tell you (speech) how to find the peace that I have.
    • B – V9 Don’t cling stubbornly to sin. Don’t prompt God to reign you in forcibly.
  • A – V10-11 Steadfast love and joy are for the righteous and upright in heart

David began by describing the reaction of a righteous man to sin in his own life. “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. Day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” He vividly described a tormented, guilty conscience. He continued by describing the antidote to his shame: confession, forgiveness, repentance. He said the same will work for every righteous person: “Let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may still be found.”

Adopting the perspective of God speaking to the penitent David, he wrote, “I will teach you how to walk and will watch over you as you go.” The wicked, to the contrary, do not repent, but cling stubbornly to their sin. If they feel shame’s call to repent, they suppress it until they can no longer hear it. Longing to be free, they reject God’s Law of life and love, and replace it with another, harsher law of death and hatred. “Many are the sorrows of the wicked,” David said, “but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in Adonai.”

David was a righteous man, yet he sinned. The difference between a righteous and a wicked man, according to David’s testimony, isn’t sin itself, but the man’s response to it. The righteous man doesn’t want to sin. He wants to be perfect, to be obedient to God’s instructions. He listens to his conscience and to God’s words. The wicked man hears the same words, feels the same shame, but trains himself to ignore it, to submit instead to a yoke of sin that can only lead to death.

Be the righteous man by confessing your sins to God, asking His forgiveness, and by endeavoring not to repeat them. In Romans 1-2, Paul describes what will happen if you ignore God’s call for too long.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
(Romans 1:28 ESV)

Eventually, it will be too late. You won’t be able to turn back, either because God won’t let you or because you have just run out of time.

(This post is about what separates the heart of the righteous from the heart of the wicked. Later this week, I’ll talk about a few outward evidences of what’s going on inside.)

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Patriarchy and Devotion

Noah, Abraham, & David were patriarchal servants of God.You’ve heard that you can know the rightness of something by its fruit. Well, here are some stories of real life patriarchy in action.

One man threw out all good sense, and devoted his entire life to a senseless project with no gain and no practical purpose at all. He neglected his family for his obsession and eventually even dragged them down with him. He abused his wife’s trust and submissive personality by pressuring her into joining him and abandoning any semblance of a real life outside of his tyrannical grip. He denied his children any chance at a normal social life by forcing them to work non-stop for years on end. His self-serving attitude turned his family into his slaves while he constantly harangued them with self-righteous sermons about how much better he was than everyone else in the world. His harping about the evil world eventually brainwashed them all, and they ended up locking themselves away from the rest of mankind and living with animals, virtually as animals.

There was another man who went even further off the deep end. He was the worst kind of sexist, even to the point of making his wife call him “Master,” and probably making her wear a veil too. He was always telling his family how God talked to him. You know what they say, “It’s OK to talk to God as long as you don’t think he’s talking back.” Well, this guy seduced a young immigrant girl and then kept her locked up at his house where he treated her as a slave for nearly twenty years. Eventually he took this woman and the son he had fathered on her out to the desert and left them to die. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, then he told everyone that God had told him to kill his own son as some kind of perverted human sacrifice. He nearly went through with it, but there must have been some last glimmer of sanity, because then he said that God changed his mind. Well, that was the final straw for the wife that he had been dragging around and treating like dirt for decades. She left him and died of a broken heart not long afterwards.

A third man was a womanizer. He always seemed to have a new woman with him. He was a sweet-talker who could carry a tune and was always singing to the ladies. They were probably the kind of women who were attracted to power and money, but didn’t have the intelligence or the character to understand what is really important in life: complete and utter devotion from your man. This man was a thug. He was known to have killed a few men, although no one ever dared stand up to him. He actually claimed to have killed thousands, but that was just his swollen ego talking. When he was caught with someone else’s wife, he made a big deal about being sorry for it, but he kept on sleeping around with his bimbos. One day he was out drunk and causing a commotion in the streets. His wife, who had been faithful for years despite his despicable ways, saw him doing a public strip-tease in front of a crowd of women. She finally told him off and ended up locked away for pretty much the rest of her life. Meanwhile he kept on with his same old ways, even trying to seduce a young girl as an old man.

Or at least that’s how most people, including Christians, would see it today.

Fortunately, God left a record of what really happened, and most Christians are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The real story is that Noah and Abraham and David were such outstanding men of God that he trusted them with the most difficult tasks. Noah’s wife and three sons knew from their own experience that he was unlike any other man alive. They willingly gave up their professions and their social standing in order to help him build an insane boat, because they knew that he was a man of God. The Bible says that “Noah found favor in the eyes of God.” Abraham was among the kindest and gentlest men that ever lived. He was fair and honest in everything he did, and his wife held him in such great esteem that she called him lord by her own choice. He had such an intimate and complete faith in God that he was willing to give up his own son at God’s command, no matter what the cost to himself or his wife. Sarah may or may not have left him or even died because of that event, but she understood that God’s will must always come first. The Bible calls him the Friend of God. David was a man of great passion and integrity all at the same time. He made a serious mistake with one woman, and paid dearly for it. But the majority of his life was spent in complete devotion to God and service to his country. He was the epitome of the servant king. His first wife, Michal, was jealous of God and rebuked David for his public dancing and singing to God. Her pride cost her everything. She never again had David’s respect, and she died bitter and childless. The Bible calls David a man after God’s own heart.

Don’t expect God’s ways to always be to your liking. His ways are not your ways. The obedience of one man means more to him than the disapproval of ten thousand. To serve him means to give up all claims to social status or pride. He expects complete devotion. A true man of God can never be devoted1 to his wife, because devotion can have only one object. To serve God means to be willing to give up every comfort, every friend, and every loved one. All of those things are no better than dirt in comparison to him.

Or at least that’s how Christ taught it once upon a time.

1 I am using the older sense of devotion, indicating complete absorption. In that sense, devotion to anything besides God is a form of idolatry.