True Soul Food

A Devotional Series from Genesis

Online Bible Audio/Readings Links (ESV)

7/9 Reading Portions: Joshua 11; Psalm 144; Jeremiah 5; Matthew 19

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

LAMB

As I mentioned in yesterday’s devotional thought, I don’t believe this verse is why the animals would fear man after the flood. That would serve no Christ-centered, gospel purpose. Yet we see a distinction in man’s diet here, from before the flood to after the flood. While man’s diet was strictly herbivorous before the flood (Gen 1:29), after the flood he was allowed to eat the flesh of animals (Gen 9:3). Why is that? Some might suggest that the flood destroyed all the green plants for nourishment, so meat became a permissible option. I don’t think that was the case, for two reasons. First, that suggestion would not account for all the animals that needed sustenance from plant life. Second, as mentioned in our devotional thought from Genesis 8:10-11, when the dove returned to the ark with an olive leaf in its beak, God must have miraculously brought back plant life, including full-grown trees. Yes, while the flood did destroy the vegetation, YHVH God supplied food through the green plants.

So, why then were animals permitted to be eaten?

Before the flood, while Abel tended flocks for sacrificial worship, animals like sheep probably did provide wool, and possibly from the sacrifices, the hides of those sacrificed animals for shoes and clothing. Cows and goats probably provided milk, and the hides of sacrificed cattle more than likely provided leather for shoes and clothing as well. They didn’t just make this up or come up with this on their own. It was passed down to them from Adam and Eve, because that’s how they were clothed by God before they were banished from Eden (Gen 3:21). Being clothed by the skins of sacrificed animals prophetically foreshadowed the gospel truth of being clothed with Christ (Rom 13:14; 1 Cor 9:12; Gal 3:27). Now, YHVH God permitted the eating of animals because it presented another prophetic gospel truth: being nourished by Christ. Jesus is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Later, when the commandment came to inspect the paschal lamb four days before the Passover and then eat that lamb on the eve of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Ex 12:11-12), YHVH God was giving His people the repetitious truth by their senses of taste, touch, smell, and sight for salvation by grace every single year for approximately 1,500 years. The Passover meal observance by God’s people would foreshadow the New Covenant instituted by Christ on the night He was betrayed, it would also foreshadow salvation by Christ when He hung upon the tree as the one true Passover Lamb, and it would also foreshadow the saved soul’s nourishment with Christ, in Christ, and by Christ, as Jesus said,

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.” John 6:35

And again,

“For My flesh is true food…” John 6:55

And again,

“Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” John 6:58

Hallelujah! What a Savior!