Turn to chapter 8 will be in Genesis chapter 8.
We will cover most of the chapter this morning.
Someone who shall remain anonymous sent me a little meme
the other day. There's a lion coming off of the
ark in being interviewed and and says yeah, the cruise wasn't so
good but the buffet was great. I had two of everything.
Thank you. Paul had to out my source.
That was funny. I was quite amused.
Waters were a little rough, but the buffet was great.
We will be exiting the Ark today.
The waiting room is a hard place to be, right?
Whether you're waiting to get in to see the doctor or you're
waiting for the loved one who's in surgery.
By the way, I love how convenient care or urgent care
waiting rooms like convenient or urgent makes it sound like it
should be fast. Anybody done like two or three
hours in convenient care before on a Saturday morning?
I have anyways. You wait and the time just seems
to crawl by. If and if you're not in the
right place mentally, emotionally and spiritually,
it's can be agonizing. Sometimes the waiting isn't
nearly as long as you expected, but sometimes the waiting is
much longer than planned. The surgeon had said it'd be 3
hours, and here you are 6 hours in, still waiting.
You just want someone to come and tell you that things are
fine. Everything went great.
Now put yourself in Noah's sandals.
God told him to build the ark, and for decades he worked on the
ark, not necessarily knowing when the time would come to do
something with it. Then God told him to go into the
ark. He went into the ark and he
continued to wait, thinking possibly I could have been
outside. It hasn't even started raining
yet and he waited for a whole week for it to rain.
Noah was on the ark more than a year and for most of this time
God is quiet in the text. Noah was waiting with no real
idea how long this adventure was going to last, but he and his
family settled in for the long haul, trusting God to get them
through. Now if you're able, would you
stand as we read Genesis chapter 8 verses one through 5?
But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and the livestock
that were with him in the ark, and God made a wind blow over
the earth, and the waters subsided.
The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were
closed. The rain from the heavens was
restrained and the waters receded from the earth
continually. At the end of 150 days the water
had abated, and in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the
month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, and the
waters continue to abate until the 10th month.
In the 10th month, on the first day of the month, the tops of
the mountains were seen. You may be seated here.
In these first 5 verses we see that the flood is retreating.
And that's the point here, right?
But but the process begins with an interesting phrase.
It says God remembered Noah. This is an interesting statement
because in our minds, to say that someone remembered
something is to imply that they had forgotten what it is that
they just remembered. It's not unusual for me to go
somewhere to do something, get home, and then remember an
errand that I'd planned to run while I was in town.
In fact, this is quite normal. Those of you who live in town,
you don't understand this. But in town is a different world
when you live north of 80, right?
OK, I know, I know there's some in here who who live out of
town, so to say. But we do our best to make sure
that any trips into town, whether it's a Walmart, Target,
Costco, Chipotle, you name it, sometimes Chipotle is the reason
to go into town and then you're like, oh, we might as well do
other things while we're in town.
But you want to get it all done in one trip.
Sometimes when you're in a project, you, you major the
project by how many trips into town did it take?
How many times did I have to go to Menards?
How many times did I have to go to AutoZone?
You're like you, major projects that way.
Now, granted, now I come into town nearly every day, right?
So it's a little bit different, but it's not unusual for me to
still forget something that I plan to do while I was in town.
Well, God, God doesn't forget. He doesn't forget anything.
No one and everyone on the ark hadn't slipped his mind.
Oh, that's right. There's these people on the ark.
No, that was not the situation. Saying God remembered means that
he's about to take action. Well, this verse is the is the
height of the passage up to this moment.
Things have been progressively getting worse, moving towards
the climax of the flood. And the phrase God remembered
signals the reversal of the waters and the and the narrative
flows back towards peaceful living.
Ultimately, as the waters begin to recede, they become testimony
to God's faithfulness to Noah, his family, and the animals.
The receding waters are testimony to God's faithfulness.
The waters receding are testimony to God's faithfulness.
In Genesis 618, God told Noah that he would establish his
covenant with him. The words God remembered tap
into that covenant language is God acted on the promise that he
had made with Noah. Later in Genesis, we'll see that
remembrance is a sign of coming deliverance.
So remembrance is a sign of the coming deliverance.
No, God is said to remember when he's describing in here.
In a few chapters he's describing the deliverance of
Lot as God is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
Then this language was also used when God opened up the Baron
Rachel's womb with the birth of Joseph.
God remembered when his people were in slavery in Egypt.
This word remember, shows up a number of times in the text.
Moses even asked God to remember His covenant with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob when Israel has turned apostate and turned from
God. That is what it's means when God
said, when God says he remembers something, he's going to bring
deliverance. Now that God's judgment has been
appeased, it's His mercy that comes to the forefront.
Verse 1 continued and God made a wind blow over the earth and the
waters subsided. This this is the beginning of
the new creation. This isn't simply the
inhabitants of the ark getting off the boats.
This whole chapter in in parts of the next chapter.
Utilize all these hyperlinks to point you back 7 pages to
chapter 1 and the creation days. Now unfortunately we are, we are
not fluent in Hebrew so we're not reading the Hebrew text, so
we can't see what is happening. It's a little more difficult to
see it in English. The word used here for the wind
is the word ruach. Ruach we saw back at the very
beginning of creation, Genesis 1 very beginning verse verses one
and two. You'll see there in the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was without form and void and the darkness was over
the face of the deep. And the Ruach that is the Spirit
of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
So this wind that we see here, it is a hyperlink, it's tied
back to the Spirit of God back in Genesis 1.
So this is connecting us back to the Spirit in Genesis 1.
There in Genesis 1-2, before the creative act began, the Spirit
was hovering over the waters. And then here in chapter 8, it's
the same Ruach that that blows over the earth and and causes
the waters to subside. As we work through the
narrative, we'll see the waters retreat to where they're
supposed to be and dry land emerges, which also is another
design pattern echoing days two and three of creation, all
indicating that Noah is the new atom.
This wind is the renewed work of the Creator and as he works the
the waters subside, the fountains of the deep are sealed
and and the windows of heaven are closed.
The turmoil of the last 150 days had come to an end.
Well, it's good for us to momentarily pause and consider
the 7th month. We don't want to read too far
into the use of seven. Perhaps the 7th month would have
been seen as a sign of rest, a season of rest.
We don't, we don't know that for sure.
We can only speculate on that. But we do know that for Moses
audience, that is. Moses is writing, writing these
words, right? And for his audience, his peers,
the 7th month is significant. For them, the month of Tishri
was significant because it was it was sacred.
It it includes the the Day of Atonement as well as the Feast
of Trumpets and the Feast of Tabernacles.
So it was appropriate that the ark found refuge in what would
become a sacred month for the Hebrews of Moses Day, a month
set aside for celebrating the atonement and God's provision.
So it is on the 17th day of the 7th month that's the ark came to
rest on the mountains of Ararat is what it says the mountains of
Ararat. Now, over the millennia, there's
been a lot of discussion as to where the ark might be in.
A number of archaeologists have claimed this location or that.
What do we know? Well, here's what we know.
First of all, Ararat is generally understood to be in
the region between the black and Caspian seas.
I think I have a hopefully have a picture there.
There we go. So you can see that Ararat or
Urartu is the is the Hebrew Ararat is encompassed.
It encompassed parts of modern day Turkey as well as Iran,
Iraq, all of Armenia, and I think even Georgia might be
thrown in there some. So so all of this blue shaded
region is kind of a blue. The blue outlined region is
considered Ararat. Now some scholars and
archaeologists believe that the ark landed on Mount Ararat,
actually on on the mountain of Ararat, which you can see here
in this picture. Next picture is located in far
eastern Turkey. It it looks like it's not quite
all the way in the corner, but it is Ararat is literally like
in the corner. It is as Far East as you can go
in Turkey. There has been a lot of debate
over the years about where the ark actually landed.
And for a long time it was considered very dangerous to go
searching for it. Prior to yesterday, I had
written in my notes that that tensions in the region were a
little less. And, and, you know, so there
have been a number of expeditions over the years to to
go explore the region. After yesterday's news of the
Ayatollah Khomeini being killed, might not be a good idea to
venture into the region. Yeah, you're, you're still,
you're in the area of Iran. And so there have been there for
years. There have been, there's been a
lot of ups and downs in the area.
So perhaps not a good time save that trip to the Ark for another
year perhaps. But some people argue that the
that the ark landed on the top of Mount Ararat.
And here in this picture you can see Mount Ararat.
There are two peaks of it. The higher one there on the
right is considered the peak of Mount Ararat.
Those who argue for this position sometimes maintain that
what we shouldn't expect to find any wood either organic or
fossilized due to the need that once the ark landed and and they
got off of off of the ark, then look, there's all this wood.
This is mighty usable for us. This is a great resource.
Let's use it for various purposes.
So the wood probably was used up.
Conversely, there are also reports of an arc shaped figure
encased in ice in an inaccessible ledge near the
summit of Mount Ararat. Though the summit of Mount
Ararat currently sits close to 17,000 feet in elevation, it is
often maintained that, well, it wasn't always as high as it is
now and has risen substantial amounts over the years since the
flood. Meanwhile, others have made an
interesting argument for the foothills of what is known as
the Drupinar formation or the Drupinar sites.
And what you see there is thought to be there in the
middle, the ark. You have to watch videos to
understand what what you're seeing.
But like the walls are of the ark or around it is, is what it
suggests. And they've used ground
penetrating radar to supposedly confirm this.
A lot of people say, no, this guy was full of it and this
isn't it. So there's all sorts of things
that are said. You can even go to a visitor
center here to visit the ark because of course, each person,
each archaeologist has their own perspectives and says, no, this
is right. This is where it is.
We may never know and really it
doesn't matter, right? But anyways, the waters, they
continued to abate and then finally on the first day of the
10th month, the tops of the mountains were seen.
No doubt this was a a welcome sight since at this point
they've been on the Ark for nearly seven months.
The next section of our text examines two birds, and so would
you look at verses 6 through 12 in your Bibles.
At the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window of the ark
that he had made and sent forth a Raven.
It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the
earth. Then he sent forth a dove from
him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the
ground. But the dove found no place to
set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the
waters were still on the face of the whole earth.
So he put it out his hand and took her and brought her into
the ark with him. He waited another seven days,
and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark, and the dove
came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a
freshly plucked olive leaf, so no one knew that the waters had
subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven
days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him
anymore. Ancient navigators would use
birds in order to find the land, but Noah isn't navigating here.
He's he's already on land. He was actually trying to
determine the readiness of of the land for habitation.
Dry land had appeared, but the people would still be on the ark
for another five months before the command to disembark. 40
days after the mountain peaks became visible, Noah ran a test
to see where the waters were, so he performs 3 tests in
increments of seven days. At first he released a Raven, a
strong bird who could more ably find conditions suitable for
living. It could live off of carry on
and they could fly farther, going back and forth in its
search for floating remains. When it finally found suitable
land, it didn't return. A Raven suited Noah's initial
purpose, but it didn't bring true comfort or or peace to
Noah, and later the Raven will be declared unclean and thus
unfit for consumption or sacrifice.
Now, having discerned that there was dry land somewhere out
there, Noah tried something a bit less Hardy.
A dove. Doves are nothing like Ravens.
Well, except that they're birds and can fly, right?
But first of all, besides the obvious color difference, one
black, one whites, doves are gentle, they have exceptional
navigational skills, they're caring parents, and they choose
their mates for life. They are much more
discriminating in their diets and are limited in their
preferred environs. They need lower elevations to
fly and they're and they're unable to fly as far and as high
as the Raven was. As the dove went out, she
couldn't find a place to land, so she returned to the ark.
Noah waited 7 days and then he tried it again.
This time the dove came back with an olive leaf in its mouth.
There was enough dry land for for at least some life to burst
forth. Olive trees are quite resilient,
so it's fitting that it's an olive leaf that was first
brought back to the ark. Noah waited another seven days
and sent the dove out one last time, and it didn't return.
The dove was a sign. Well, of course, first of all,
it's a sign of conditions starting to become suitable for
habitation, but it's also a sign that that peace was being
restored on the earth. The dove and its olive leaf had
become historic symbols of peace, right?
The dove and olive leaf symbolize peace.
The flood had purged the earth of its wickedness, so there was
peace between God and and man. But ultimate peace doesn't come
until Jesus though. And and all four of the gospels
when writing about Jesus baptism, all four of the gospels
say that the spirit came down on Jesus in the form of a dove.
This dove at Jesus baptism symbolized the peace that he
would bring as the Holy Spirit rested upon his ministry.
So the dove prefigures the Holy Spirit.
The dove here prefigures the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is our is our peace and our comfort.
The the Raven hadn't brought any real comfort.
No one knew it was a Hardy bird. So the real test was the dove.
The dove finding a place and not returning brought comfort to
Noah's family. If conditions were suitable for
the dove, then, then it wouldn't be long before Noah and his
family and the animals are able to leave the ark and gain their
freedom. Just as the dove had.
God's judgment was over, so peace would reign.
Look now at verses 13, at verse 13 and 14, we'll see everything
dry up there. In the 601st year, in the first
month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried
from off the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark
and looked and behold, the face of the ground was dry.
In the second month, on the On the 27th day of the month, the
earth had dried out. Nearly a year after Noah had
entered the ark and dry ground finally appeared.
Noah removed the covering from the ark.
We're not entirely sure of what that covering was like, but but
it was such that it took some work to to open it.
Its primary purpose seems to have been sealing up the ark,
keeping the water out and and the inhabitants dry.
As he opens up the covering, he's able to see that the earth
had dried out. Now this declaration was another
was another hyperlink back to Genesis 19 where God said let
the dry land appear. So a new creation was beginning.
This is the beginning of a new creation.
Something of significance is happening here in the Hebrew
text. Again, this is the only time in
Moses writing where where the word mixa refers to something
other than the covering for the Tabernacle.
Every time this this word is used, it refers to a place of
God's presence. It usually refers to the
Tabernacle covering. God hadn't abandoned Noah and
the inhabitants of the ark. He was right there with them in
the in the watery voyage, getting them through the actual
storm. They all came under God's
covering. They were experiencing His
presence. In verse 15, a year and 11 days
after the deluge began, God commanded Noah to exit the ark
and they were finally able to step back onto solid ground.
Reading at verse 15, God said to Noah, go out from the ark, you
and your wife and your sons and your son's wives with you.
Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all
flesh, birds and animals, and every creeping thing that creeps
on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be
fruitful and multiply on the earth.
Notice Moses doesn't just say they all got off the ark.
He could have, he could have said that right?
They they all left. Instead, he uses his design
pattern and inserts more hyperlinks to the creation
narrative. He mentioned not only humans,
but he also calls out every Ling, every living thing that is
with you of all flesh, as well as the birds, animals, and
creeping things. He explicitly names them.
Moses called out all of these, demonstrating that this is a new
creation. Just like what was happening
back in chapter 1. God once again issues the the
cultural mandates and that is the command to be fruitful and
multiply. And as they exit the ark, the
narrative basically comes to an end.
Verse 19 reads every beast, every creeping thing, and every
bird. Everything that moves on the
earth went out by families from the ark.
God was committed to the preservation and flourishing of
new life. New beginnings would take place.
People would reproduce and spread throughout the whole
earth. At least that's that's the
command to them. And animals would populate the
Earth with their unique species and characteristics.
Every kind of creature was saved, and now they, human and
animal alike, were all being released to fulfill their
purpose. Now, as I've mentioned before,
it's important that we don't simply relegate the flood
narrative and the Ark to fun little Sunday school stories or
songs. It's more than that, and we can
learn a few things from this. First of all, trust in God's
timing and plan. Trust in God's timing and plan.
Noah didn't disembark in his own timing.
He waited for God's command. He'd waited at the beginning.
He'd waited for God to tell him when to go into the ark, and
then he waits for God to tell him when to leave.
Noah's experiments with the birds had given him some
information about about the world out there.
OK, things are drying out, but it was God who determined the
timing. I love what the famous
commentator Matthew Henry said. God consults our benefits rather
than our desires. He knows what is good for us
better than we do for ourselves, and how long it is fits.
Our restraints should continue and desired mercy should be
delayed. We would go out of the ark
before the ground is dried, and perhaps if the door is shut, we
are ready to thrust off the covering and to climb up some
other way. But God's time of showing mercy
is the best time. God has a plan.
His plan is the right plan. So when you think that you're
going to wait to apply for a lead pastor position after your
son graduates was not the right time, was not the right plan.
I had it all worked out, but fortunately God had better
plans. Graduations here and just a few
months will be not really empty. Nesters don't know what's
happening there. We'll see.
But it will be weird to not have a high schooler anymore.
The only person in school will be Louie Ann, and she has, I
don't know, decades? I don't know, I don't know how
long she'll be in school. We'll see when she's done.
So God's plan is the right plan and He will direct us in His
time and in His way. We can think we've got it all
planned out, but God is the one in control and and working
everything according to His will.
Live within His boundaries and desires, not your own.
So next, trust in and live by God's mercy.
Trust in, trust in His mercy, and live by His mercy.
In the midst of this judgment, we see God's mercy demonstrated.
God could have completely wiped out everything, every single
living thing, but instead he saved a remnant of humans and
animals. This was God's mercy
demonstrated to this man Noah, who was righteous and and who
had walked with God. As we trust in God's mercy, then
we should also distribute that mercy to others.
When you've been wronged, you've been offended.
It might be that God wants you to show mercy.
Don't simply take God's mercy, but give it out as well, living
a life of forgiveness. Lastly, trust in God's
faithfulness. Trust in His faithfulness even
when we can't see it. God is working and accomplishing
His good plan. He's faithful and He's always
working. As the inhabitants of the Ark
exited, no doubt they would have been thankful for God's
faithfulness in that difficult season and we will see that next
week their first actions as they as they exit the Ark.
He preserved their life and demonstrated His ongoing care
for all of creation. Difficult and life changing
events do not alter God's faithfulness.
Sometimes we will go through the unimaginable, but God can redeem
that and He can use it for His purposes, growing us in that
season, further showing His faithfulness in all seasons of
life. So as we close out the flood
narrative proper, we need to be diligent to take note of these
aspects that God's plan is right, his plan is right, his
mercy is great and he is faithful.
The words of Exodus 34 seven speak to God's character says
God's judgment goes out to a few generations, but his steadfast
love extends to thousands of generations.
He's overwhelmingly merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
That's the God we see on display here in the midst of judgment
and the flood narrative as they exit the ark.
Let's bow our heads and close our eyes,
God, as we approach this time. My hope and prayer has been that
the the Ark and the Flood would not just be simple Sunday school
stories. But that's in the flood, that in
the ark we can see your character on display, who you
are. You are, yes, a God of justice,
and so sometimes that requires judgments.
But you are still a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to
anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
May we not forget that. May we trust your timing.
May we, may we trust in your great mercy and always believe
that you are faithful. It's in Jesus name we pray,
Amen.