And Like A Flood

Image by Public Co

Our world is under the judgment of God today. It is not just that the world is doing things that will bring judgment, the things that they are doing ARE the judgment. I don’t have to describe to you what you see on the nightly news about the sexual revolution and transgenderism. I don’t have to rehearse the images that you’ve seen coming out of the various wars around the world. You all see these things plainly every day. And while there will come a day when there will be a great judgment over the whole planet, as we will see in a minute, we already have the seeds of that right in front of us. In Romans 1, we see God hand over people to their sin as part of their judgment. Essentially, God would be saying, “Do you want to bend nature and rebel against God’s rule for marriage and intimacy? Ok, let’s see you do that. Let’s see how far that can take you.” We are seeing this play out in hatred leading to war. We are seeing this play out in apathy to the Bible and faithful living. We are seeing the consequences of God handing our world over to what it wants. 

Now admittedly, that seems a little scary, doesn’t it? I mean, we have to go along for the ride! Yes, we will be spared ultimate judgment, but boy, it doesn’t look like things are going to be all that smooth leading up to that either. What do we do? How do we react to seeing the world handed over to the sin that it wants and us having to suffer the consequences of that? Well, this passage is going to tell us how to do that. Noah had to literally go along for the ride of judgment on the Earth. Noah didn’t like anything that was going on in the world, yet a planetary flood was coming to the planet Noah lived on. This was going to make an impact on his life. How did Noah react to being in the midst of God’s judgment? Well, he hoped only in God and responded in worship. Coincidentally, those are the main points for today: God is your only hope in the midst of judgment and The proper response to judgment is worship. 

God is your only hope in the midst of judgment
We begin with a final reminder of Noah’s character. The grace that God has given to Noah has been very evident in Noah’s obedience to God (Belcher, 95). It is very similar to Abraham being obedient to God as an expression of his faith in Him (Romans 4). 

Noah has finished construction, so now his family and the animals are all getting on the boat. Here, there is an expansion of the number of animals that are getting on the boat. We’ve all heard that it was two by two, because that was what was in chapter 6. Here we are given an additional detail that God also wants Noah to bring in seven pairs of clean animals and just one pair of unclean animals. To the original audience, Jews freshly freed from Egypt and who have just been given a list of animals that they can safely eat and offer as sacrifices, I’ll bet this came as a relief. God is providing for there to be more animals that can be eaten and sacrificed for sin. There are also seven pairs of birds that are to be brought in, especially kind given that the dove was the offering of the poor person in the Old Testament (Matthews, 388). God was looking out for the least of these all the way back in the flood. 

God is always the hope. Even when, as that great philosophical school, REM, said, it's the end of the world as we know it, yet we truly can feel fine because God is setting things up to be ready for future sacrifices for sin, the ability to repair the relationship with God in future centuries, even amongst the poor. 

We get this message twice as it repeats to us that God has all the animals needed and Noah and his family safely put into the ark. Remember how I said that Genesis slows down when it wants to show us something. People can think that ancient writers were too dumb to notice that they already wrote something down and so this addition is some sort of other writer, wrongly detailing things. That is just a surface reading of the text. If this were a movie, we would be seeing the same scene from two different angles because the Director wants us to really notice what is going on here. They are getting into the boat; they are going to be safe. They have been called into the boat, as Matthew Henry says, "...like that of a tender father to his children to come in-doors when he sees night or a storm coming." 

And then it culminates in the Lord, the covenant name of God, shutting the door. In the end, it all comes down to God’s gracious mercy. God shuts the door and keeps it closed during what is about to happen. He honors the covenant He sets which He still does. This is why we keep our eyes on Him during times of judgment like we are experiencing now. 

When Noah turns 600, in fact, the second month of the year, and in fact the 17th day of that month, the flood comes. "Unlike the Mesopotamian flood stories, the Biblical account sets the event in a historical framework. For the author of Genesis the flood event is as real as the birth of Abraham" (Matthews, 376). And what a flood it is. There is water coming from above and below across the whole earth. The fountains of the deep “break forth” a term that calls to mind a very violent event (Belcher, 95), and water is coming down like never before. But in the midst of that, the ark is lifted up. Again, from Matthew Henry, "When the flood thus increased, Noah’s ark was lifted up, and the waters which broke down every thing else, bore up the ark. That which to unbelievers betokens death unto death, to the faithful betokens life unto life." In other words, God is doing a lot of things in the midst of trying times. That which crushes God’s enemies, in due time, will deliver the righteous. 

But God’s enemies are, indeed, crushed. The waters spread all over the earth, covering even the highest mountain by twenty feet or so. That’s total destruction just as God said there would be. We do well to meditate on this. God always comes through on His promises, and ultimately that includes promises of judgment. Judgment is often delayed, but it is never denied, as I believe R.C. Sproul said. Sin is going to have consequences, and they don’t have to be planetary for them to be destructive to us. Even one sin can be destructive to us. Thomas Watson meditates on that for us, tolerating one sin in our lives is like missing just one piece of armor, or having just one gap in the safety fence, or hiding one rebel to the crown in your house, or just having one drop of poison in the cup. We need to believe God that these sins will hurt us. Can even sin separate one who is truly united to Christ? No, but it can sure hurt one’s effectiveness for Christ.  

But now, we turn to chapter 8, and we read the most comforting words, “God remembered.” The word “remembered” here doesn’t mean that God forgot about Noah and then suddenly recalled him to His mind. No, this is covenant language (Matthews, 382). When you see “God remembered” it means that God is about to act on a previous agreement. God knows that He has made a covenant, and He is about to come through on His terms.

God begins the process of drying out the earth, and does so actively. He sends a wind to move the waters. Does this sound familiar? It turns out that the word for wind is the same for Spirit. Now the wind, the Spirit, the Ruah, is hovering over the waters again, separating the dry land from the water (Belcher, 96). The world is being recreated. 

But it is a process. The water goes down slowly but surely allowing the ark to rest on the mountains of Arat. Quick side note here: Every few years, news stories go around wondering if we have found the ark itself or at least found this very location. I might not have brought this up, but, as providence would have it, there was a fresh round of stories this week about this again. This wasn’t Answers in Genesis, but Popular Mechanics writing about possible discoveries of human activity, marine materials and seafood in this region. People have made claims like this as far back as the early 1900s, and the results are always inconclusive. Would it be cool to know precisely where the ark landed? Of course! Is it necessary for us to find this ark for us to believe that the Bible is true? No. One day the scientists will climb up the mountain of truth to find the theologians already there. 

Anyway, the ark comes to rest on the mountain, slowly the waters recede, and the animals are let out to repopulate the earth. The original command of God is set out to cover the earth with life. One scholar comments, “...catastrophe does not interrupt God's desire to bless the world" (Ross, 195). Even God’s own punishment does not take out His desire to bring goodness. Never think that because God is taking you through something hard means that He is out to get you, that you have somehow used up all of God’s goodness, and now all He has is hardship for you. No, as Matthew Henry so eloquently put it, "The same hand that brings the desolation, must bring the deliverance; to that hand, therefore, we must ever look." When the diagnosis is given, when the family member dies, I mean the real hard stuff in life comes, look to Christ. Deliverance is coming, my flock. Say with the Psalmist, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” Your help comes from the One who also recreated the Earth. The one who flooded also dried. He can do that for you, too. It might take a while. God does things gradually for us so that we stay grateful for the small things (Matthew Henry). And there is one thing that we can always do in response to even cataclysmic judgment: worship.   

The proper response to judgment is worship.

When the floodwaters come down, the first thing that Noah does is build an altar, and puts those clean animals to their use. He offers a burnt offering to God. What does this mean? Ross explains, "The whole burnt offering represented the worshiper's total surrender and dedication to the Lord, and the expression of the Lord smelling the sweet fragrance represented God's acceptance." (197) Nothing is being held back from either party. Noah isn’t getting to eat of that sacrifice, it is totally given to God, and God in His graciousness, accepts that offering. 

Listen to what God says about that. He is never going to flood or curse the earth again. The word “curse” is a different word than what we saw in chapter 3. So God isn’t lifting Adam’s curse on the ground (after all, Paul mentions it in Romans 8:22), but He isn’t going to lay on anything else to it like the flood. But God goes on to say that man is still sinful "...meaning that despite warrant for another judgment God will exercise clemency." (Matthew, 395). We have deserved a planet-wide flood, but God doesn’t require that again in flood form. He will judge the Earth again in the last day, and this is hinted at in the last verse, “as long as the earth remains.” As Matthews comments, “This shows a permanency for the world, but it also infers that the present heavens and earth will someday cease" (397). 

But I don’t think that this is the most impressive thing that we see in the Bible here. It is not that God spares the world, but I think our main takeaway as New Testament Christians, is Who does the Lord crush? He doesn’t destroy the world, because He is going to offer up His own Son in its place. For you! He hasn’t crushed our world, our planet, because the Father made an agreement with His Son to satisfy the calls of God’s justice. The Son sacrificed, the Father sacrificed to make your salvation possible. A worldwide flood brings justice, but it doesn’t bring justification. Here the Son of God, Jesus Christ volunteers to take all the wrath that was to be poured out onto a still sinful world on to Himself.  

And do you know what He was doing during all of that? I heard this from a preacher named Neil Stewart probably a decade ago now and have never forgotten, Jesus is singing Psalm 22. Get this, in the midst of judgment, Jesus was WORSHIPING the Father. That’s your Savior! A Savior who in the midst of pain, suffering, and death that belonged to OTHERS, belonged to you and me, worships God. 

Can we not do the same? Yes, the world is terrifying. God’s judgment tends to be like that. But the hand that crushes is the hand that cures. The God who is allowing the world to spin seemingly out of control is the same God who will give up His Son to one day make it right. So if you are not taking God up on His offer of salvation, what is holding you back? Come to ark. Flee the judgment. Leave your sins behind you and embrace a God who loves you so much that He made a way at great cost to Himself to rescue you. 

And if you are in Christ and enduring a world that is in crisis, remember your Jesus. Remember your Jesus who worships in the midst of pain, and worship Him. One day deliverance is coming and is in progress even now. No matter what you are facing, God can turn it for good. The flood waters make take a long time to go down. It may take your whole life. But God will dry out your world. Keep praying. Stay close to God. And one day, God is going to call you out of that ark, and into a new world where there will be no more pain or judgment.