Life After The Flood

Every moving thing that is alive

shall be food for you;

I give all to you,

as I gave the green plant.

Genesis 9:3

When God created man, He created him a vegetarian. Genesis 1:29 tells us that God had given man every tree that had fruit yielding seed and every plant yielding seed as food. Genesis 1:30 also lets us know that God created all the beasts of the earth and every bird and everything that moved on the earth as a herbivore.

The fall of man changed this.

In the beginning, death was not to reign. Men did not kill men and animals did not kill animals, but when sin entered the world after the fall, death entered with it. Here after the flood, we see God giving man permission to eat animals, possibly because in this new environment he would have to, to be able to survive, to not be overtaken by the beasts of the earth.

The relationship between man and beast would be forever altered. The relationship between man and man had already been; we saw this with Cain and Abel in Genesis 4.

God tells Noah that He has given the beast of the earth as food for him, but also He reminds Noah that life is precious and that life is in the blood (Genesis 9:4).

When we are sick and doctors are searching for the reason, they check our blood. When we have been wounded and blood leaves our body, we have blood banks available to replace that blood. We have learned that God’s words are true, that life is in the blood. God is the creator of all life, and it is all important to Him, no matter how big or small that life may be.

What God also institutes after the flood is capital punishment. “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed” (Genesis 9:6). What is interesting here is that God is letting us know that this judgment, this flood, has not changed the nature of man’s heart. God institutes capital punishment because He knows that unredeemed man will continue to hate and will continue to murder. He wants us to know that He counts our lives as precious and that we are to count the lives of others as precious. But we also are not to allow those who take this precious life through murder to go unpunished.

Oh Father,

Life is precious in Your sight. You tell us that the life is in the blood. How true Your words ring in my ears. Sometimes it takes the gift of blood from another to give us life. It is the blood of Christ that gives us life—not just sustaining life, but eternal, everlasting life. Yes, there is life in the blood: “My blood has eternal life” (John 6:54).

My Jesus, thank You for the gift of life that You have made available to all who will receive by Your shed blood on the cross of Calvary. Your blood is precious, true, and pure, and by it I am justified, and so are all who will believe. Oh that many would believe!

My Jesus, it is in Your name I pray,

Amen.