After Noah offers up a bunch of critters and God decides to never destroy the earth again, God surprises everyone by changing their diet. They can eat meat now, and so their relationship with animals is going to change drastically—but God also has to teach them about blood and what it is and is not allowed to be used for.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, all Scripture comes from the CSB this week, the Christian Standard Bible, and we will mostly be in Genesis 9)
God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are placed under your authority. Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you; as I gave the green plants, I have given you everything.
However, you must not eat meat with its lifeblood in it. And I will require a penalty for your lifeblood; I will require it from any animal and from any human; if someone murders a fellow human, I will require that person’s life.Whoever sheds human blood, by humans his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.But you, be fruitful and multiply; spread out over the earth and multiply on it.” (Gen 9:1-7)
Last week, we saw that the first thing that Noah and his family did after getting off the ark was to build an altar—which is much easier than building an ark. They would have gathered large stones and piled them into a heap and then wood, which they would have placed on top of the stones. After lighting the wood on fire so that there were hot coals to use, Noah would have taken the animals and waited until they were very calm and he would have quickly cut the throat with a knife so sharp that the animals wouldn’t feel anything. And the animal would have been placed whole on the altar. The Bible tells us that God enjoyed the smell of the meat and that He said to Himself that He would never deal with the problem of evil again by sending a disaster on the entire earth. But now, this week, we will see God speaking to Noah for only the second time since telling him to get on the ark in the first place. What is God going to say and why was it so important? And what is a Bible sandwich? We’re going to talk about that too.
A Scripture sandwich is something that we find in certain books of the Bible and especially in the Gospel of Mark where it talks about something, and then changes the subject to talk about something entirely different, and then goes back and talks about the same thing all over again. It’s like the stuff on the outside is the bread and on the inside, we find the meat and mustard and hopefully some avocado! With today’s lesson, the verses begin and end with God telling Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply and to spread out over the earth. And we were supposed to do that because otherwise, it would be too easy to just have one big city in the middle of the earth. And if that happened then humans wouldn’t be image-bearers for God because they wouldn’t be going out everywhere so that the whole planet could see what God is like. The earth needs to be cultivated with good things like fruit trees and wheat and grapes and all sorts of things. God made the earth to be good and to provide food not only for people but also for animals. And we can’t take care of things that are a kazillion miles away. We can’t rule over the entire earth if we are all cooped up in one place, that wasn’t God’s plan. God wanted the entire planet inhabited with His image-bearers, the people who show the world what God is like.
And so that is the sandwich bread for this week’s lesson. And you might ask what we are supposed to do now that there are over seven billion of us and people are everywhere now. That’s a really good question because the problem isn’t that there aren’t people everywhere. The problem now is that the people everywhere don’t know about God and about Jesus. When Jesus left to go be with God, He gave a new commandment, “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt 28:18-20) Christians are fruitful and multiply not only in having kids, even though we still have kids, but the more important way that we are fruitful and multiply is by introducing people to God by teaching them about Jesus. Anyone can have kids whether they know and love God or hate Him, and so that isn’t what we should focus on or be proud of. Jesus gave His people a brand new and better way to be fruitful and multiply, by making people into believers. Let’s look at some of today’s verses.
God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are placed under your authority.”
Now, Noah and his sons weren’t missionaries or in the ministry, if they were the only folks on earth then the only way they could be fruitful and multiply was to have kids and to teach them to love and obey God. Which is how God planned for His ways to be the only ways on earth. Of course, Noah didn’t know anything about Jesus because, at this point, He hadn’t taken on a human form yet. He was there as the Son with God and the Holy Spirit but He wasn’t human yet. And so, with no perfect human to perfectly show the planet exactly what a perfect God is like, humans were given the authority to do the best they could over the planet and over animals. But because God knew that humans want to do bad from the time they are born until the time they die, things had to change with the animals. God made the animals not only be a bit nervous around us but to have fear and terror! And that’s exactly how we should describe any animals that are not used to being cared for and fed by humans. Why did God do that for the animals? Aren’t they better off living close to us and not being worried about us?
Not really. I can’t tell you how many times I have been on a walk with my husband down by the river only to see a kid kicking or chasing the geese, right in front of his parents while the parents laugh. A whole lot of humans like to be really cruel to animals. It isn’t as bad as it was 200 years ago before William Wilberforce created the RSPCA (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and started to make people think differently about things like beating horses to death when they are too tired to cull the cart, or forcing animals to fight one another until one dies, or killing an elephant just to take its tusks for the ivory. There are animals that are extinct now (meaning there aren’t anymore) and endangered because people can be very selfish and cruel. Hunters go out and they eat what they kill, no different than buying cows and chickens from the supermarket, but too many people just enjoy killing for the fun of it. To protect animals from that, God made them so that they are afraid of us, for their own good. It’s amazing how much God cares for all of the things He has created! So birds will fly away, animals will run away, and fish try to stay away from hooks and nets. An animal has to be trained not to run away from a human.
Our authority, meaning our right to rule over the earth, needs to have limits because we aren’t like Jesus. God told Noah and his family that the animals are all under their authority but He knew that He couldn’t trust people with that authority unless the animals had their own protections. Isn’t that sad? That God can’t trust us to treat His creation with gentleness, kindness, self-control, and wisdom? That’s why, when Jesus was raised from the dead, God gave Him all authority in Heaven and on Earth. God doesn’t have to worry about Jesus using His power in any terrible ways. God can and does trust Jesus with absolutely everything and everyone not only on earth but in the entire universe. It’s like the difference between a good king or queen and a bad king or queen. Do you run when you see one coming or do you try to get closer? Let me get you an example to help—when Jesus was out in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, the Gospel of Mark tells us that the wild animals were there with Him. They weren’t afraid of Jesus because there was no need to be. He is their King, and they know they can trust Him to be entirely good and not at all evil. Wild animals would never trust us in that same way. And they shouldn’t! What else did God have to say to Noah?
Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you; as I gave the green plants, I have given you everything.
Wow, now that’s a big change! If you remember all the way back in the beginning, humans were only allowed to eat plants. Meat was not on the menu, boys. However, I do believe that one of the kinds of violence that was going on in the world before the flood had to be violence against animals and I am sure they were probably being eaten too. Just because people aren’t supposed to do something or aren’t allowed to do it doesn’t mean they don’t do it. You might have noticed that humans have always done a lot of things that God didn’t tell them to do and if the critters were hanging around unafraid then it would have been a real problem. And Noah and his sons might have been eating meat too because the world had gotten very bad and all we know is that Noah was the best of the bunch. And so, God is allowing humans to have meat and in the future, He will even command that people eat meat on certain occasions like Passover.
However, you must not eat meat with its lifeblood in it.
This is a very serious commandment that we see all the way through the Bible. Not just in the Old Testament but also in the book of Acts. Jesus’s followers among the Gentiles were told to never ever eat meat with blood in it. And really, most people don’t. Blood is just nasty but in the ancient world and still in a lot of places today, people believe that drinking blood actually helps them. In some cultures, they think that if you kill an animal and drink its blood, you will become stronger or wiser or faster! Others believe that if you kill a person who is an enemy and drink their blood—no, you aren’t a vampire because that’s made up—they think that whatever made your enemy strong will make you strong too! Some people use blood as medicine because they think it will cure them and especially in cultures without modern medicine. In other places where they don’t have access to salt or saltwater, they eat blood instead. We need salt in order to live and so in some cultures, what they do is strangle animals instead of cutting them on the throat so that the blood stays in the body. Animals killed this way suffer a lot and God has never wanted animals to suffer like that. So, we are commanded to spill the blood out onto the ground instead to return it to God. God says that all blood belongs to Him because there is life in it and it is no wonder—we can survive without a lot of things but blood isn’t one of them. And people would notice that when a person bleeds too much that they die so that is a good way for God to put it. They didn’t know that the oxygen in the blood is what actually keeps us alive, it keeps our organs working and without it they stop working really quick. And speaking of our blood and not just animal blood—what does God have to say about that?
And I will require a penalty for your lifeblood; I will require it from any animal and from any human; if someone murders a fellow human, I will require that person’s life.
Things have changed a lot since the very first murder when Cain killed Abel. The world became so terribly violent that even Noah’s family has to be specifically told not to kill anyone. That’s pretty messed up. God tells us that an animal who kills people has to die, and also any person. Not many sins in the Bible are talked about this way, that someone has to die because the crime was so over the top horrible but murder is one of those crimes. Murder, killing someone on purpose, is a sin that can’t ever be made right by saying sorry or replacing something or giving someone a present. When a person is dead, they are dead. And all the people who love them are going to suffer because of it. Suffering is worse than just being sad because suffering hurts us all over–inside and outside. People see things that remind them of the person who was killed, and they hurt inside so badly. Murder is the most terrible sin of all. And God doesn’t want us to do that, so He gave us a warning that the person who kills has to be killed. When people get away with killing, it’s easier to do it again. But what about accidents? Well, the Bible tells us that when someone is killed by accident that it is entirely different. Still, let’s try to never kill anyone by accident either, okay? Most accidents that end up killing people are actually pretty easy to avoid. Don’t play with guns, ever. Don’t play with knives, ever. Don’t throw rocks off of high places. Don’t take drugs. Don’t eat things that aren’t food. Pretty much, if someone is daring you to do something—don’t ever do it! And especially if someone is holding a video camera because all they want to do is to take a video of you getting hurt so that they can go viral on YouTube.
And we’re going to have a little poem here about it. God will often communicate with us in poetry even when it doesn’t look very poetic in English but in Hebrew, it is obviously a poem: “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.” And now we have the reason why God tells us not to have any patience for murder. Each person on this planet is made in the image of God—we have the ability to be like God in how we behave, how we love, how we take care of people, and how we care for the world around us. Only humans are able to do that. Animals live by their instincts, and they are very concerned with their own survival and the survival of their babies and their own family. Only humans are willing to die to save a complete stranger or to fight for something that only helps someone else. Think about firemen, for example. Firemen risk their lives to save other people’s homes—you certainly wouldn’t see a wolf rushing to try and save the bunny from a fire. Nope, but he would open his mouth and eat a bunny that was running away from the fire! Lions don’t care if they eat the very last wildebeest. I mean, they will care later when they can’t find another one to eat but they aren’t going to try to protect them and make sure that they don’t go extinct. The deer aren’t creating national parks and wildlife refuges where animals and beautiful places are safe from people who might want to destroy them.
You see, God gave humans this special gift—the gift of caring and the gift of being smart enough to figure out how to take care of things. The rest of the animals can be fruitful and multiply but only humans can do that plus rule over God’s creation with wisdom. That doesn’t mean we are always wise and good about how we treat the world, but it means that we have the ability to do it the way we think God would do it if He was here with us. So, when a human is murdered it isn’t like when an animal is killed for food. When a human is killed, the world has lost something very special. All the things that human knew are now lost, and all the things that human would have done won’t happen. If that person is young, then all the children they could have had won’t be born. The discoveries they would have made won’t get made or maybe just not for a lot longer. The things they could have built won’t be built. The Jewish people have this wonderful way of looking at it—they say that when you save a life you have saved the whole world! That’s because every person who has ever been born has something important to do to make the world a better place no matter who they are or where they are.
Every human being has this wonderful spark of life inside them that isn’t like anyone else and certainly isn’t like any animal. Yes, I am talking about you! You are going to meet people whom I will never meet, and you will go places I will never go and you will know things I will never know and you have wonderful God-given talents to do things that I can’t do. And that’s just some of the wonderful things about you and just a few of the reasons that your life is so important and precious to everyone else. Because you are one of a kind and no one is exactly like you (not even if you are an identical twin), it means that God has you on a special mission that no one else can do quite the same way. I don’t know what that is but as you follow Jesus and try to live more and more like Him, you will find out what it is and it will probably be a surprise! And maybe you won’t even find out about it for a very long time but if you keep on listening and waiting and watching, all of a sudden it will happen.
Do you think that I ever thought I would be a teacher? No way. I didn’t even think that ten years ago. It wasn’t until I was about forty-four years old that one day, out of the blue, all of a sudden, I could teach people things. I tried before that, and it was a horrible disaster. But what I have been good at since I was a teenager is studying and writing. I always got A’s in English and History even though what I really enjoyed was science. And so, I went to college and got a degree in Chemistry and spent three and a half years learning about really complicated math and physics and chemistry and really wasn’t very interested in writing books or teaching the Bible. Goodness, I wasn’t even a Christian until I was twenty-nine years old! I was really a big mess in my life even though I was smart, and I worked really hard. I bet a lot of people thought I was hopeless and maybe even some of them wanted me gone forever!
But then one day, God started making that spark in me get bigger and bigger until I couldn’t ignore it anymore and I started to believe what they said about Jesus. And then one day I told Jesus that He is the boss of me, and I wasn’t going to ignore Him anymore. And then I started to change a lot. And I started to learn a lot. But still, I didn’t know what my special job was. And about ten years later people started having strange dreams about me being surrounded by kids and I was like, “uh oh, two is enough for me!” My husband Mark was even more worried about that than I was. But then, one day out of the blue, God made me a teacher and I found that I could teach people things pretty easily. I couldn’t teach anyone anything before that. And I started writing books for grownups, but people kept seeing me surrounded by kids in their dreams, and then I was dreaming about it too. And one day, God told me to write a kind of book that had never been written by anyone before. He told me to write a book that teaches kids about the really complicated stuff about the Bible because you are smarter than people think you are. And He told me how to write it and told me what order to do everything in so that kids could understand it and then He did it three more times. I haven’t written a book in about four years but now I am on the radio teaching kids from all over the world! How crazy is that? Well, it isn’t nearly as crazy as me being surrounded by a hundred kids in real life, let me tell you.
God gave me a job that was only for me and when He asked me to do it, I did it. And you know what? There is nothing very special about me. I just kept listening and reading my Bible and learning about history and one day, God put all the pieces together, and bit by bit He led me on this journey to teaching you guys. Now let me tell you something, God wouldn’t take a scientist and turn her into a Bible teacher just for you if you weren’t very important. God took my whole life and changed it and focused it on teaching you guys. He went to a whole lot of trouble too, let me tell you. When I pray and when I have dreams, God often tells me how important you guys are to His plans for His Kingdom. Grown-ups often think that Jesus will return any minute but if that was true then God wouldn’t be telling me how important you are and about all the things He wants you to know about Him. You guys are going to grow up and get jobs and have families and you are going to do very important things for God. You’re definitely going to make the world a better place. I believe in you because God told me how important you are to His plans.
I love you. I am praying for you. And I pray that you have a wonderful time studying the Bible with the people who love you.