Gen 9:1–17 — The Covenant of Common Grace

As we read in our text, in verse nine, God is saying, I am establishing a covenant with Noah and his offspring and with every living creature that is on the earth. This is a special covenant that God is making with all of creation. It is a unique covenant. It is unlike most other covenants in the Bible. Most other covenants in the Bible are covenants of special grace with God’s people. For example, the covenant that God made with Noah before the flood was a special covenant.

Remember in chapter six, verse 18, God says similar words, I will establish my covenant. But that covenant in Genesis six is made with Noah and those who are in the ark. And the covenant is a promise of grace to save them through the judgment. It even says there in chapter six, verse 19, that they will be kept alive, all of the creatures will be kept alive with you.

We see that this covenant is a covenant of special grace for God’s people only because in Genesis chapter eight, verse one, it says that after the flood was over, God remembered Noah. That is, he remembered that covenant that he had made. That language of God remembering Noah is echoed as well in our passage today in chapter nine, verse 16, where it says, when I see the bow, I will remember the covenant. And so the language of remembering Noah means remembering the covenant.

But it is a different covenant. The covenant that God made with Noah and those who were with him in the ark was a covenant of special grace to save them through the judgment. He was not making a covenant of grace with all mankind because those who were outside of the ark perished in the flood. He was making a covenant of grace, a covenant of salvation, a covenant of redemption with his people. And with Noah as the head of his covenant household. This covenant here in Genesis chapter nine is a distinct covenant.

It is a covenant with all mankind, with every creature on the earth. Notice how often it says that in the passage in Genesis chapter nine. Over and over again, you could just take a highlighter and underline or highlight each of these phrases. For example, verse 10, this covenant is with every living creature. Also verse 10, it is for every beast of the earth.

Verse 12, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature for all future generations. Again and again, it is a covenant with universal implications for all mankind, indeed for all creation. It is an everlasting covenant between God Verse 16 at the end, between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

It is almost like it is piling up extra words to make it clear just how universal in scope this covenant is. It is not a covenant of salvation for God’s people, it is a covenant of common grace for the entire world. This covenant is foundational for the entire flow of redemptive history, for the entire rest of scripture. It is a covenant of common grace that sets the context for God’s special work of salvation and redemption.

This covenant of common grace is so important that we are going to spend a few more weeks camping out here in Genesis chapter nine. Today is part one, just introducing what this covenant is all about, and then next week we will look in more detail at that paragraph at the beginning that we read. Remember in verses one through seven. I am not going to comment too much upon that paragraph today, But that paragraph that talks about the renewal of the cultural mandate to be fruitful and multiply. It also talks about giving man every creature on earth to be in his dominion, to be in his hand. Even to eat, to be able to eat every moving thing that lives upon the earth, as well as the reference there to capital punishment for those who commit murder. That whole section is very important because it provides us with the marching orders for what humanity is supposed to do under this covenant of common grace. And we will look at that in more detail next week. But today we are just going to introduce this covenant. What is this covenant of common grace that God is making with all mankind?

One of the key things you have to understand about this covenant is you have to go back and look at the last three verses of chapter eight. We did not read it, but the last three verses of chapter eight are an important segue from the whole story of the flood that we have just looked at.

The flood and then Noah and those who are in the ark coming out of the ark and beginning to enter into this new world that God has made. In Genesis eight, verses 20 through 22, we have a very important transitional paragraph that sets the stage for this chapter here, Genesis nine. Let us read that, Genesis 8 verse 20. Then, this is after the flood, the waters have subsided, Noah and his family and all the creatures have now gone out of the ark and they are now beginning to build their lives in the new world. It says then that Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again, underline those words, never again, I will never again curse the ground because of man. For, this is interesting, the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.

Neither will I ever again, there is that same concept, never again, strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, sea time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Twice in verse 21, God is saying, never again. I am not going to do what I just did. I am not going to wipe out all of humanity and all of the creatures on the earth. Never again am I going to do that. That language, never again, which is found twice in verse 21, is repeated in Genesis chapter nine. Genesis chapter nine, verse 11.

I will establish my covenant with you that never again, shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. And never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And it is actually repeated a fifth time in verse 15 at the end. The water shall never again become a flood to destroy all the earth.

The Postponement of Final Judgment

This is the essence of what this covenant of common grace is all about. This is not saying that there will never be a day of judgment, but it is saying that God is postponing the day of judgment. God does not immediately pour out his wrath upon all of humanity. Now, he did do that in the flood, although Noah and the animals that were with him in the ark were spared, but God is not going to do that again, at least for a long period of time. Notice that it says, while the earth remains, so in chapter eight, verse 22, while the earth remains, I am going to make this promise to never again bring a flood upon the earth.

So that is a very interesting statement. It is not an absolute promise that there is never going to be any judgment. No, there is, we know that. We know that there is a coming day of judgment at the end and that the flood was simply a prototype of that. The flood was simply a picture of the coming judgment at the end of history. But what God is saying here in this covenant of common grace is that day of judgment is going to be postponed for a long time while the earth remains. That gives us a little qualifier to this.

At first you might just take that phrase never again and think that means never. No judgment ever again. But clearly it is being qualified here because he is saying, while the earth remains, I am not going to destroy the earth by a flood. And in fact, that language is clarified. What does he mean by never again? It is clarified in verse 11 of chapter nine where he says, never again shall all flesh be cut off by a flood. The waters of the flood. And never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. But that does not mean that there will not be another judgment.

If you look in 2 Peter, 2 Peter chapter three, 2 Peter 3 is a commentary on our text. 2 Peter 3 is Peter raising the question that some people have. The objection is, it does not seem like Jesus is coming back. It seems like it has been a while now. Where is the day of his coming? And he says, many will scoff and say, where is the promise of his coming? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. People look at the seeming stability and order of the world around them and they think, well, maybe there is not going to be a day of judgment.

And then what does Peter argue? He says, 2 Peter 3 verse five. That they deliberately overlook the fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God. And that by means of these, the world that then existed, that is the pre-flood world, was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word, The heavens and earth that now exist, that is the post-flood world, are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. So clearly, according to Peter, what God is promising when he says never again, is never again am I going to destroy the world by the waters of a flood. But that does not mean that there is never going to be a day of judgment.

And we can see that very clearly in our text. We do not need 2 Peter to prove it. We can see it in our text by that language there that there is a qualifier in chapter eight, verse 22. While the earth remains, sea time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.

This provides us then with a clear insight into the nature of this covenant of common grace, that God is actively restraining his judgment, but it will come to an end at some point. His restraint of his judgment will be let loose in the final day of judgment when the world will be judged, not by the waters of the flood, but by fire.

What Common Grace Is

And so this gives us then a clear understanding of what this covenant of common grace is all about. This covenant of common grace is that God is suspending, postponing the final judgment in order to create a world order that provides a degree of temporal blessing and for people to continue to have families, to procreate, as God will say to Noah, to be fruitful and multiply, to experience cultural labor and cultural development, to provide a history that will provide the context for God to pursue his saving purposes through the coming offspring. And so we see this very interesting connection between common grace, which is universal, and special grace, which is for God’s elect. God is providing this common grace field, this backdrop, this temporary restraint of judgment in order to allow for cultural history to unfold. But he is doing so with an end in view. He is doing so with the goal of accomplishing his redemptive plan through Christ, the coming offspring.

We do not really have a whole lot of time to look at this today, but just keep in mind that this passage here in Genesis 9 is sandwiched between these references to the genealogies. Remember the genealogy of Genesis chapter five, which takes you from Adam through Seth down to Noah, and then the genealogy in chapter 10, which is the next chapter, In Genesis 11, not Genesis 10, so in two chapters, in Genesis 11 we have a second genealogy which picks up where the genealogy of Genesis 5 left off, that is from Noah and traces from his son Shem down to Abraham. So this chapter, Genesis chapter nine, which talks about God’s common grace covenant with all mankind, which is a universal covenant, not a covenant of special grace, is sandwiched between these two genealogies, which are tracing the genealogy of Christ, the genealogy of the Messiah, that begins with Adam, goes through Seth, all the way down to Noah, Noah, then through his son Shem, from Shem down to Abraham, and from Abraham, ultimately, to Christ. So God is pursuing his ultimate goal, which is the goal of salvation through Christ, to redeem the elect through the work of the coming offspring who will crush the serpent’s head and deliver God’s people and bring them into the new creation.

God is pursuing that plan all along. And this covenant here that is sandwiched, or that is in between these two bookends, this covenant here is simply providing us with the context for it. God is setting up this backdrop. He is setting up this cultural history, this interim world order that provides for the restraint of judgment. It provides for some degree of life. And even the unbelievers who are outside of the covenant of grace are going to benefit from these blessings that God is going to give to humanity in order to preserve a world in order to preserve a process of genealogical development until the offspring should come, until Christ should come and save his people.

This covenant of common grace then is directly related to God’s covenant of special grace like the one we saw in Genesis 6:18 with Noah and his family and later on in Genesis 12 with Abraham and his offspring. It is related to that because it provides the context for God to accomplish that purpose. What is amazing is that not only is God restraining the judgment, that is the essence of what this covenant of common grace is all about.

The Unilateral Commitment of God

He is postponing, he is delaying the judgment. But he not only does that in a sovereign way, he could, he could just sovereignly say I am going to hold back from the judgment in order to allow for time, allow for cultural development, allow for history to take place so that I can pursue my plan of salvation through Abraham and his offspring. He does not just simply do it by a sovereign decree in saying I am going to withhold the judgment. He actually formalizes that in the form of a covenant.

Is that not amazing? Look at how emphatic our text is. Genesis chapter nine, verse nine. Behold, I establish my covenant with you. And then he goes on to talk about the sign of the covenant, the rainbow, which we will look at in the future. But he talks about the sign of the covenant to reassure the world of this promise. When he sees the bow in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature that is on the earth. It is not enough that God simply in his sovereignty just simply says, I am going to hold back the day of wrath. It is that he even goes further and provides this covenant guarantee that he is going to do this.

The world now is being secured for a history. Yes, that history will ultimately terminate at the end, at the day of judgment at the end. But the world is secured, is preserved. We see that same language in 2 Peter 3 verse 7. I read that already where he says the world that now exists, the post-flood world, is being preserved until the day of judgment.

God says, I will remember When I see the bow in the clouds, I will remember the everlasting covenant. This indicates that the covenant rests entirely on God’s promise. I will remember. I will fulfill my covenant promise. It is a covenant of grace. Now, it is not a covenant of special grace, but it is an absolutely unconditional covenant. All of the cultural mandates that we are going to look at next week in the first seven verses about being fruitful and multiplying and the provisions given for civil government and civil society, all of these provisions are not conditions where God is only going to restrain the judgment and provide these blessings of temporal life and temporal ability to have children and provide for a cultural development of the world. Only if the people of the world keep those commandments in Genesis 9, 1 through 7. No, obedience to the cultural mandates is not a condition for the covenant’s continuance. It is a covenant of sovereign grace where God is guaranteeing, I am making this covenant. And it is totally based upon God’s grace. Now again, it is not special saving grace, it does not deal with sin, it does not change your heart, it does not give you new life in Christ, but it is still a covenant of grace. That is why we call it a covenant of common grace.

And it is not conditional upon man’s performance. How many nations of the earth today in modern secular western societies are denying verse 6? Verse 6, the commandment that whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed. Capital punishment is not optional, and yet there are many places in the world, our own state here, California, has pretty much put a halt to any form of capital punishment. Is the state of California now disobeying God’s commandments and therefore is God retracting his common grace benefits upon the state of California? No. God continues to let the people of this state live and breathe and engage in economic activity and have children and families in spite of their rebellion against God’s command.

The Universal Scope of the Covenant

This is a covenant of common grace. Again, it is called common because it does not make any distinction between believers and unbelievers. It does not distinguish between those that are God’s people who are in special, saving, redemptive covenant with God through Christ, and by the Spirit dwelling in them, and those that are outside of that special relationship with God. Even those that reject God, even atheists who spit in God’s face and deny God, they are still blessed by this covenant of common grace. It is common because it does not distinguish between the elect and the reprobate. It does not distinguish between those that acknowledge God and those that do not acknowledge God. It is God’s common grace benefits to all mankind. It applies to all without distinguishing between God’s holy people and those that are outside of the covenant community.

Notice how different this covenant is from the Abrahamic covenant, or from that special covenant of grace with Noah before the flood, or the covenant that God made with Adam and Eve after they sinned and he promised them the offspring to come. Those covenants are special covenants, covenants of special election with saving promises of grace that changes the heart, that deals with sin, that is by forgiving our sins and by transforming us and giving us a new heart. Those are covenants that require faith and that faith is only given to the elect by the working of the Spirit in their hearts. Those covenants have special covenant signs that are not given to the unbelievers, but only to God’s people. The sign of circumcision, for example, is not given to the Canaanites and to the Egyptians. It is only given to God’s holy people, defining them as being the ones who are in special covenant with God, who are set apart from the world as God’s holy people. This covenant, the covenant of common grace, is for all mankind and the rainbow, the sign of that covenant, is for everyone to see and to benefit from.

God sends his temporal blessings upon the elect and the non-elect alike. Just think about the very fact that we all get to breathe the air. That is just an amazing thing, is it not? We can, every moment you take a breath, you are breathing in God’s common grace benefits to this world. That very breath that God gives even the unbeliever with which they curse God and man is God’s grace to them, God’s covenant, covenanted grace, common grace given to all mankind. This covenant then is critical to understand. It is critical because it provides us with the context for understanding God’s purpose in the world.

The Redemptive Purpose of Common Grace

Why is it that God allows the world to continue to enjoy all of these benefits? Why does he send his rain and his sunshine upon the just and the unjust alike? Why does he allow even great civilizations to flourish for a time and to have tremendous economic activity and even technological developments? Why does he allow this? It is because of this purpose that he has. He is delaying the judgment in order to accomplish his salvation work through Christ and through the preaching of the gospel.

What an amazing God we have. And as the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter two, verse four, should not we be thankful for these blessings? He is referring to the unbeliever. And he says, do not presume on the riches of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience. God is so kind to you, allowing you to breathe, allowing you to live, to enjoy the benefits of this life. He is being forbearing toward you. He is putting up with you. He is tolerating all of your sin and rebellion. But that is for a purpose.

He says God’s kindness, God’s forbearance, God’s patience with unbelievers is intended to lead them to repentance. He is giving people an opportunity to repent of their sin and to come to Christ. Similar wording is found in 2 Peter 3, verse nine. Where right after that section that I just quoted about how the old world was destroyed by the waters but the world after the flood is going to be destroyed by fire, Peter says in 2 Peter 3, 9, the Lord is patient. He is patient with mankind because he does not wish that any should perish. And so you see how common grace is inseparable from special grace. Common grace is there in order to serve the purpose of God’s special grace.

He allows history to continue in order to provide time for the ingathering of his elect into his kingdom, into the ark, until that final day of wrath comes. And he is inviting us all to repent of our sin, to stop being so presumptuous and thinking that all these benefits are things we deserve, but rather to realize, wow, God could destroy me at any moment, and yet he does not. He is being patient with me, and so how I ought to fall on my knees. Fall on my face and humble myself before God and say, God, how I have been so unthankful, how I have despised your common grace benefits, not realizing that you have been forbearing and putting up with my sin. It ought to lead us to a sense of repentance so that we would know the Lord.

I think this even applies to us as believers. Right, I think that we as even as believers sometimes forget, right, we sometimes forget about how all of these blessings that we give, all the temporal benefits of relative good health of houses and cars and earthly possessions and clothes and relative peace and safety in this land in which we live, all of these things are merely God’s grace to us. We do not deserve any of them. And so often we presume upon God’s grace and we think we deserve to receive more money and more of the earthly benefits of this life. And we get out of sorts and we start to complain when we do not receive what we want as soon as we want it.

Instead, we ought to humble ourselves before the Lord and say, Lord, I have indeed taken advantage of your grace. I have not let that sink into my heart and bring me to a sense of true repentance for my sin. The Lord is calling us to understand and to appreciate his grace. His common grace, which is universal even for unbelievers alike, is also a sign that leads us to his special grace. To those that are elect, God opens their heart to see, to let this reality sink into their hearts, to bring them to a sense of God’s forbearance toward them, which then leads us to be even more zealous to live for Him and to serve Him, and to not complain when things do not go quite as we want them in this life, but rather to thank Him for the blessings He does give us that we do not deserve for a moment, but yet He encourages us to live for Him and to use the gifts He does give us which is really only a temporary gift that he gives us as stewards of his grace, to use it for his glory, to use it to pursue his purpose, his ultimate purpose, which is the salvation of his people. This covenant of common grace that God made here in Genesis chapter nine is absolutely foundational for a biblical worldview. It helps us to understand where we are at right now in the history of this world.

It gives us some perspective, does it not? We tend to worry about things because we have such a narrow perspective. We are only thinking about our own period of time right now in 2026. And we are only thinking about our own immediate life in this world that we live in here in California, in the United States of America. And we kind of get a little bit focused in upon ourselves and our own time and we forget about the way the world has been for a long time.

For a long time, there have been catastrophes and tragedies and wars and economic upheaval, and yet God, through it all, has provided a general stability to this world in order to accomplish his saving purposes of saving his elect through the preaching of the gospel.

And so we do not need to worry about things that might make us fear that perhaps the world is going to end. How many things have we heard in our lifetimes about how the world is going to end? Whether it is the climate catastrophe that was supposed to happen a few years ago and never did, or whether, going even earlier back to my youth, when I was growing up in the 1980s, I was worried about nuclear winter. We were worried that there was going to be mutually assured destruction between the United States and the USSR and that the whole world would be destroyed by nuclear devastation. Be an apocalyptic end to this world. Or maybe now, maybe the latest thing now is people are worried about artificial intelligence. Maybe the fear is that artificial intelligence is going to become so intelligent and so maybe achieve consciousness and it is going to turn into Skynet and destroy us all.

We can be confident, brothers and sisters, that none of these things are going to happen. Until God says it, until God says, okay, now is the end of the world and Christ is going to come back, we can be confident that none of this will happen before the day of the Lord comes. God has made his guarantee, he has promised that he is going to sustain the earth while the earth remains. Seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will not cease. We can trust God.

We do not need to be overly alarmed when we see change in this world. There is a lot of change going on right now in this world. Geopolitically, there is change. Economically, there is change. The internal politics of the United States is changing as well, with an extreme move toward the left in certain quarters, but also there is some developments in the area of Christian nationalism that are not healthy. We can trust God, in spite of all these changes that are happening. That He is in control and that He will guide us through it, that He will sustain His people, He will protect us through these problems. Change is to be expected. If we step back and get a bigger view of world history, we realize that changes like this have happened all throughout the history of the world.

There have been much worse times than the time we are living in now. And yet God sustained his people through it. The gospel continued to go. The church did not get destroyed during the times of persecution. God is going to continue to accomplish his singular saving redemptive purpose through the covenant of grace and through the preaching of the gospel.

And so it helps us then as God’s people to step back and have a biblical worldview so that we are not constantly being shaken to and fro and being agitated by all of these things that we see on social media and all of these fears about catastrophes that are about to happen.

We can trust God that he is in charge. He is sovereign over all that happens in the affairs of men in this world. And he has given his own covenant guarantee that he is going to make sure that it continues, that the world continues until the day of Christ, until every elect person has been gathered into the kingdom of God. And then he will bring about the final consummation of history. What a glorious God we have, a sovereign God. He is the creator of all things. And he is also the sustainer and providential governor of the creation that he has made. And he is doing so with a purpose, with a goal in view. And one day, all of history will be wrapped up One day, every wrong will be righted. Every injustice will be overturned. Christ will wipe away every tear from our eye and he will bring us into the everlasting kingdom of the new creation at the end.

What a glorious hope we have and how that hope ought to encourage us and sustain us so that we would serve him now in this life. Using the gifts that he has given us, even those common grace benefits of this temporal life, using them for his glory, using them to advance the cause of his kingdom through the preaching of the gospel and the advancement of his church.