The Flood Subsides

I'll go ahead and read our scripture for today.

This is Genesis eight, verses one through twelve.

But God remembered Noah, and all the beasts, and all 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 one hundred and fifty days the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Arat.

And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month.

In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

At the end of forty 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 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 Noah 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated wherever you are.

Thanks for joining us on the live stream this morning.

Honestly, it is strange.

There's just a strangeness in speaking out into an empty room, looking at a camera.

We are uh this is our second week doing this.

And as Zach said earlier, there are so many changes that are taking place in all of our daily lives and in all of our normal rhythms.

And uh a lot of this has pressed us, and and the word that keeps coming up in my mind is it's it's bound us.

So many of us are feeling bound in really clear ways.

We're we're bound to our homes, unable to leave them.

We're bound financially because of joblessness or jobs that are drying up or just the fear of the way we're having to work now.

Uh we're bound uh with our finances in the stock market for some of us, where if we if we were to remove those now and sell off, it would incur such an incredible loss.

And so futures seem bound up in this uncertainty.

Uh many of us are bound with the actual sickness with COVID-19 and bound to their beds or bound uh sequestered in their homes.

And then others of us are bound to serve those people who are sick, still having to wake up each day and go into the hospitals and serve uh what's becoming an overwhelming situation.

And so we are bound.

Um and so something that's giving me a lot of solace, something I've taken so much hope in, is this passage from 2 Timothy.

Now, this is the last letter that Paul would write that we have anyway, and and it's written to his child in the faith, Timothy, and he's writing it where he's he's in prison uh awaiting trial.

He says in 2 Timothy 2, verses 8 through 9, he says, Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal, but the word of God is not bound.

2 Timothy 2:8–9

Amid all of this binding and constraint, the word of God is not bound.

It is doing its work, it is going out, and the gospel is still the power of God for salvation to everyone who would believe.

And there is a truth that is moving forward, and I think we can see it in some pretty amazing ways, uh, just in the normal operations or just in the ways that people have had to adapt to a situation like this.

Um, what's been cool to see is just our own church.

There's uh some folks in our church that have come down with the COVID-19 virus, and um another uh couple had signed up to be one of the helpers in our app, which you're able to do under the connect tab.

And so we were able as a church to connect this couple who can no longer leave their home with uh the with a couple in the in the app, and they were able to have their prescriptions picked up for them by someone in the church.

Others have had their finances really threatened by uh joblessness and by job threats through this time, and community uh community groups have rallied around to support people in them, redemption groups uh to keep it on brand.

Uh redemption groups have rallied around to support people in them uh financially by giving beyond things that I've ever heard given to individuals in our church before.

It's it's amazing and it's beautiful, and it's also really hard right now because I know marriages are stressed.

I know roommate relationships probably are.

There's just a lot of fear circling where we are.

And so, how important it is to remember that the word of God is not bound.

So let's focus this morning in on the word of God.

Today we're continuing our movement through Genesis.

And that's partially in hope.

It's partially a statement that we're saying by just continuing the normal pattern of our preaching, which says the word that we were preaching before is sufficient for a time such as this.

The word that we uh had depended on, the same series, even, is sufficient for this moment, these fears, this particular situation.

We're going to see how it's almost shockingly the case today.

Last week, the flood came, and Noah and his family climbed aboard the ark.

God shut them in, and everything that was not in the ark died.

But all who were in the ark survived.

Today we see that God will remember Noah.

And in God's remembering Noah, and the way that that's conveyed to us, we're given this picture of what it means to be preserved through terror towards a new creation.

A picture that maps perfectly onto what it means for Jesus to pass through death into a glorious new life on the other side, one that we can share in by being in Christ.

And that starts with seeing that God remembers.

So let's get into this.

Genesis 8, verses 1.

Genesis 8:1

But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark, and God made a wind blow over the earth, and the water subsided.

Now, to remember in Old Testament language, for God to remember, it's not as though God was like walking around, you know, one day and was like, oh, Noah, he's still in the ark.

I gotta go do something about that.

It's not that he was out of God's mind and then popped into God's mind.

What that language is used to convey is that at a point in time, God is now intervening.

God will now move in space and time and intervene by action in a special way.

And the language that's used here shows us the type of way that God intervenes when he remembers.

It says, God made a wind blow over the earth and the waters subsided.

Now, we're given this picture that should jog our memory from early on in this series in Genesis, where we're seeing that it's the very same word as the spirit that's hovering over the waters at the beginning of creation.

It's the Hebrew word rua, which is for both wind and spirit.

And so we're given this picture of Genesis 1, verse 2.

Genesis 1:2

It says, the earth was without form and void, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Okay.

Well, okay, so we're back.

We're back.

Uh tell your friends, send out your texts.

Uh Zach, maybe you want to maybe send another push notification that we're back live.

Um we apologize for that.

I I'm not quite sure what happened.

Some bug with the internet that went down in our building or something.

Uh upload speeds all of a sudden went to like nothing.

So uh thanks for being back with us.

Let's let's uh uh uh kind of refocus ourselves back on where we were with the text.

Um I don't know if I had to emphasize this, but the coronavirus, uh, the whole thing, almost everything about it is really a pain.

Um so let's pray and get back into the word.

Father, uh I pray that by your grace you would sustain this dream for the time being.

Lord, that you would let us have this this uh this small way of gathering together while we can't gather together.

Lord, I pray that you would settle our hearts for this time, that we might see your word clearly.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Okay.

So we're talking about how God remembers and how the way that God remembers by intervening in the situation and the language that's described here of God's remembering is the language of a new creation.

So just as he says that the wind blew over the earth in Genesis 8, describing the mechanism that he uses to remove the floodwaters, so he describes the spirit hovering over the waters at the beginning of creation.

And that word spirit and the word wind are the same word.

And so the writer of Genesis is giving us this clear picture that God is recreating the earth by bringing the flood waters apart.

This picture of a new joy of creation.

Now, this same wind uh uh participates throughout scripture, where we start to see this image where in uh Genesis we see the wind that uh uh the spirit hovering over the waters, and so that becomes this creative force.

And then throughout, and then here in Genesis 8, when the floodwaters are removed, we see the wind is the one that does the removing.

And then in Exodus, when Moses moves through the Red Sea, it's the wind that parts the sea so that they're able to walk over on dry land.

We're seeing these pictures.

That is, the spirit brings about a new creation.

It is the Spirit of God who works to renew what has gone wrong.

It's a recreative force the spirit is.

And so this ties in in that way to the scriptural narrative, but beyond that, we see in 1 Peter 3, verses 20 to 21, this other connection that the ark in particular has to our faith.

1 Peter 3:20–21

It says, 1 Peter 3, 20 to 21, it says, While the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The ark moving through the water, safely towards a new creation, is a picture of our baptism.

Peter is saying, look, see how the ark passed through this time of chaos and death into a new life of a new creation.

In the same way, baptism symbolizes that.

But baptism is better than what the ark did.

Because baptism symbolizes not just us passing over flood waters, but us passing into the very death of Christ, so that his death becomes our death.

And then passing into the very resurrection of Christ on the other side of that death, so that his new life, his recreation, his resurrection becomes our new life, our recreation, our resurrection.

That's what baptism shows.

Because here's the reality of the ark.

Excuse me, Noah stepped off the ark with the same heart that he got on the ark with.

The ark didn't cleanse Noah's heart.

The ark didn't change his conscience.

It didn't take out his heart of stone, corrupted by sin, and give him a heart of flesh.

It just preserved him for a time.

But in Christ, when we are baptized into Christ, we are brought into so much more than the ark.

We are brought into the very person of Christ, so that death is no longer frightful for us because we know that there is a resurrection on the other side.

Our baptism into Christ cleanses our very conscience.

And that's because there's a new creation that we are headed towards.

We aren't just headed towards a world on the other side of a flood.

We are headed towards a world on the other side of the judgment of God.

And throughout the Old Testament, the judgment of God, the day of the Lord, we think of those things in terms of like apocalyptic movies.

But the Old Testament talks about those things positively, something to be looked forward to and hoped for, because that means God's justice will finally be realized on the earth, and there will be a final new heavens and new earth that is recreated so that we might live in them in the joy that we were intended at creation with God.

So there won't be any more crying or pain or tears, but the passage through that means passing through something more terrifying than floodwaters, but passing through the very judgment of God.

And what could take us through that?

It is only Christ.

It is the blood of Christ that we are baptized into that cleanses our conscience, cleanses our hearts, that takes us through the judgment of God into the glorious new heavens and new earth on the other side.

This is the schema.

This is what it means that there's a glorious kingdom stored up in heaven for us that can't be lost.

For it to be stored up in heaven, I'm gonna borrow an NT right analogy.

Because we often think of it, it's like, okay, it's stored up in heaven, so that means it's just where I go when I die.

But if some if a friend told you, hey, I have some beer stored up for you in the fridge, you wouldn't think, okay, I need to climb into the refrigerator in order to drink the beer.

Uh instead, you'd say, oh no, it's stored there, so it's kept for me, until it's brought down to be consumed and enjoyed.

And that's what we look forward to in the new creation on the other side of God's judgment.

We look forward to the new heavens and the new earth that were stored in heaven before, but now are unveiled because God has made the earth and his people his own dwelling place.

That's the picture.

That's the schema of creation.

So we're looking forward to a new heavens and new earth that we're brought through by the blood of Christ.

That is our hope as Christians.

And it's so important for us to have that clearly in our minds so that we're able to discern how we should live in situations like this.

Here in this, for the rest of the passage, with this remembering that God remembers in our minds, we're going to look through and see how is it that we should live in this time between God's creation, the fall, and between his final coming to inaugurate the new heavens and the new earth.

How do we live at a time uh like this?

And this passage showing uh Noah transitioning out of the ark into the world as it is now, it gives us key insights.

And there's three of them that I want us to focus on.

So the first thing that we'll do is we wait.

The second thing is we discern.

And the third is that we remember.

So three things, three points that are so relevant for right now.

We wait, we discern, and we remember.

So first of all, we wait.

Genesis eight, verse four through five, it says, And in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month.

In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

So what are the numbers that come to mind when you think of Noah's Ark?

It's forty days and forty nights, right?

And we think of this as like a month and change operation.

But they were on the ark.

This is just until they could see the tops of the mountains was 10 months.

They were on the ark for more than a full year, just a few days over an entire year.

So you've been in your house alone or just with your family for a week.

How's it going?

You hanging in there?

This quarantine was for a full year on the ark.

A year with Noah and his sons and their wives.

Imagine those wives.

Uh a year in quarantine with their in-laws.

It's a miraculous event from start to finish.

But it kind of begs the question, right?

God, we knew what you were doing.

You're removing the sinful from the world.

You're preserving this one remnant of humanity and of life on earth.

Why take a year?

Why not do this in like, you know, you you took less time to make the whole world?

Why not wrap this one up, you know, pretty quickly?

Instead, he takes a year of Noah and his family.

It couldn't have been a very joyful experience to have been on that ark.

But we can continue with that question, which is why look, we we also know that like this new heavens and new earth is coming.

It's been inaugurated at Christ.

It's it's certain because the payment was made by Jesus, your own son, God.

Why not just kick us into this new stage?

Why don't we just go ahead and go into the new heavens and the new earth now?

Why are we wasting all this time here going through things like the coronavirus?

Like, why not say, you know what?

Okay, judgment day is going to be like 10 minutes before the coronavirus mutates from an animal to a person?

That way we don't have to go through that whole thing, and we can just jump into the new heavens and new earth, the one with all the bugs worked out, all the sin taken away, and we can live joyfully forever.

Why does God keep waiting?

Is he not powerful enough to save?

Uh, is he not compassionate enough to save?

Well, last week we moved through a passage in Peter as well, and there's a lot of uh 1 Peter and 2 Peter uh that we're dealing with because he references this flood story quite a bit in his writings.

And just after one of the passages we referenced last week, uh comes this verse in 2 Peter 3, verse 9.

2 Peter 3:9

It says, the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

So here's the question Why is God slow to stop this?

Why was God so slow on the ark to bring about his new creation?

Why has it been so long since Jesus before the new heavens and the new earth has come?

Well, Peter teaches us how to think about that.

It's the patience of the Lord.

It isn't that God has forgotten about us, it isn't that God has abandoned us, it isn't that God no longer hears our prayers, it is his patience towards us.

Because consider this if he had come a generation ago, he would not have rescued you.

Perhaps the patience of the Lord toward us now, towards him not bringing about his new heavens and new earth in this moment, is him considering that he desires your grandchildren to worship and know him.

And perhaps their grandchildren.

See, we're taught how to think about the patience.

Patience of the Lord, these times that we experience as just painful waiting.

In Christ, we know that it could not be for our harm, but it's patience because God desires those whom he has sought to save.

So, point one, we wait.

And we remember that God has not forgotten us, but is patient towards us.

Point two, we discern.

So before Noah just jumps off the boat, he sends out two birds.

He sends out a raven.

And the raven just goes to and fro, back and forth from the ark until the flood waters subside.

No change, no nothing.

It's just two and fro, back and forth.

But then he sends out a dove.

And when he sends out the dove, it goes to and fro like the raven.

But then he sends it out again.

And the dove goes out and it retrieves an olive branch, which lets Noah know, okay, the flood is getting even lower, down to where olive trees can grow.

And then he sends out the dove again.

And because he knows that he can trust the insights from the dove, when the dove doesn't return, he knows that it means the dove has found land where it can live.

Now, right now, we have so much data.

It's insane.

If I if if we were to make this YouTube video really take off right now, we would call it the coronavirus explained in one chart, which is the way that you title every article.

You have one chart and then you explain everything with one chart.

And we keep chasing it down.

I know I've become like addicted to it, where it's like, look, if I could just, if I could just get the right piece of information that'll really unlock this thing, then I'll know what type of event I'm standing in, and I'll know: am I overreacting?

And I am I underreacting?

Is this real?

Is it not?

What is happening?

If I just get a little more data, if I'm able to get it, then I'll finally know, and I'll finally be settled in my heart.

So we chase it.

Here we see there are two types of data.

There's one type of data that's like the raven.

It's gonna be going to and fro forever.

It's gonna be more of it, and it's gonna keep grow, it's gonna keep going up, and you're gonna keep wondering, what can I glean from this?

Is there anything I can know from this?

Then there's another type of data that the dove demonstrates.

And that's the type of data that actually discerns in a meaningful way, in an actionable way.

Perhaps this is why the dove becomes the symbol that the Holy Spirit takes on when he descends at Jesus' baptism.

Now, do you see how these moments parallel?

Peter says, look at the ark, it's just like a baptism.

And at Jesus' baptism, he passes through the water, and then the dove descends.

And it declares by God's word who Jesus really is.

It offers the discernment and the clarity.

And then in this instance, we see that dove, the same symbol of the Holy Spirit, comes and offers the discernment and the clarity.

So what we s what we see is this second type of data, which is not like the raven, which is just constant and unable to offer any real discernment.

Instead, it's like the dove, which offers the legitimate discernment of the spirit.

Now, this the dove becomes the symbol that the spirit takes on at Jesus' baptism.

And we can see that almost drawn in this glorious parallel between this moment on the ark and Jesus' baptism, as Peter describes the ark as a picture of baptism.

And so the ark passes through the water, and then the dove offers the discernment of the new creation that is to come.

Now, at Jesus' baptism, we see Jesus pass through the water, and then the Spirit descends in the form of a dove, and then the word of God, the voice of the Lord, declares that Jesus is the Son of God, the one who is bringing in this new creation.

And so it's so important for us to see at this time, it's so important for us to see the uh to not get drowned out in the cloud of data, to think that we'll be able to settle our hearts there, or to think that we'll be able to bring any real, legitimate discernment there.

Now, some people should.

Some people should be working on this, and that should be their job.

You should have enough humility to know if it's not yours.

Look, we can chase it around all day.

But in order to understand the type of situation that we're in, we're going to need the Spirit's discernment.

And the Spirit shows his discernment by the word of God.

Those two things together are how we're going to be able to wrap our heads around the type of situation that we're in.

And it's the very word of God that comes next.

Because Noah doesn't just receive the olive branch or see that the dove hasn't come back, and then gather up the family and say, Let's get off the ark.

Instead, it is the word of God that calls them off the ark, confirmed by the Spirit.

Genesis 8, 15 through 17.

It says, Then God said to Noah, Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' 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.

And we see that on the other side of the flood, there's something new.

There is a return to the good intention of creation.

Because look what God does.

He calls them out of the ark, and he says, No longer remain in loneliness.

No longer remain in this isolation.

Instead, go forward, be fruitful, and multiply.

This good intention that I had for the world, which has been corrupted by sin, is not lost.

Sin has not had the final word, but I have preserved it through his one righteous person, through Noah.

So that is our second point with this gospel picture of coming off the ark and repopulating the world.

We wait and we discern.

We are not tossed about by the noise of data, but listen clearly to the word of God guided by the Spirit.

That is our purpose.

And finally, we remember his promises.

When Noah finally does step off the ark, he builds an altar.

And he takes uh some of the seven pairs of animals that he had brought that were for of the clean animals that were for sacrifice, and he uh sacrifices them, and this is the Lord's response.

Genesis 8, 21 through 22.

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have.

While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

God makes this promise to Noah.

Says, look, the way that I destroyed the earth here, where I killed everyone, and I destroyed all of life.

I'm never going to do that again.

So long as the earth remains, there will be a pattern that's discernible and understandable, and there will be an environment that you can really live and thrive in.

But this isn't because he's changed the hearts of humanity.

In fact, he makes it very clear he hasn't.

He says, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

So what does this mean?

We can see that God has put himself in this sort of strange situation.

He says man is completely evil.

There's this total, there's this, there's this at bottom, there's this evil in the human heart.

But I'm not going to destroy the world.

So what now?

Has this God, who we've described beforehand regarding the flood, has this God began to ignore his own justice?

Does he no longer care of the harm that comes on the earth because of sin?

Does he no longer care about the disease and the viruses?

Does he no longer care about the oppression?

Does God now just wink at justice?

Well, look, we know the story.

We know that the way that God solves this issue, the way that God solves this dilemma that he puts himself in by saying he will never again destroy the world, is he takes the punishment for our sin upon himself.

It is that Jesus will bear the just wrath of God, and that in Jesus bearing it and us being united to him, his death is counted as our death.

And in us being united to him in baptism, his righteousness is counted as our righteousness, so that our very hearts will be changed, so that when we pass through the waters of judgment day, we will be able to live forever with him.

Which means that when everything else around us shakes, when the ultimate thing shakes on God's Day of Judgment, we are completely secure in Christ.

We are solid in Him.

He draws us up from the pit of destruction out of the miry bog and he sets our feet upon a solid rock.

And you know, for a moment like this, it's important to say that this promise still holds.

Some people have asked, look, is the coronavirus, is this the judgment of God?

And there's a simple answer.

Yes, absolutely.

You know, God's wrath is revealed against humanity all the time.

Sin, uh excuse me, uh disease and sickness, these are not the intended parts of God's creation.

These are products of the fall.

The consequence, the real consequence of sin.

And in that way, they are the wrath of God.

But we know that his wrath for now is restrained.

It will not destroy the world as it did in the flood.

So in this moment of patience towards us, let us cling to Christ, whom he has given us to take us through the ultimate crisis that is coming.

And in knowing that, we can live wisely in moments like this.

What does it mean that the world will no longer be flooded again, that there'll be this steadiness?

Because we see that throughout the rest of creation, it's plagued by events like the coronavirus.

There's worldwide famines and there's poverty and there's other plagues and sicknesses that will take place, even in this book, even in Genesis.

What it means is that God has provided a way for us to deal with those things by wisdom and by compassion.

So two examples.

One is the story of Joseph.

Joseph is plagued by a worldwide famine, or the world is plagued by a famine.

And Joseph, because he was in the right position in Egypt, he is able to wisely anticipate this and see to the salvation of so many that they wouldn't die because of lack of food.

By the wisdom of God, they're preserved.

And later on in the New Testament, we'll see Paul doing this almost constant act of shuttling between churches finances that are able to sustain those who are plagued by poverty or by other ailments or things of that nature, and the ones who happen to find themselves in a position of security.

And so, in moments like this, we're given opportunities to demonstrate these pictures of love and compassion for one another.

So that when we are in moments that are scary, which look, this is one of those, when we are in moments that are scary, we don't need to buckle down and hold tight and just protect our own.

But we can know that we are secure in the most scary thing, which means we're definitely secure in this.

So, how do we live through something like this?

With wisdom and with compassion, with love for one another.

We don't foolishly go about and uh ignore what seems to be a very real situation to and say, Okay, sir, sir, who gets sick gets sick.

We try and help.

So we stay inside like this.

And we move with compassion and love.

So we don't hoard, but we give generously, knowing that the one who is in control of this is the God who always provides for us.

When our security can make it through judgment day, then we know that we have a type of security that can make it through this.

So let's remember his promise, his promise towards us in Christ.

Okay, let's take one question.

What if I don't believe that people are inherently evil?

It's a uh difficult, it's a difficult question uh uh to answer because it seems really personal.

Uh so let's define what we mean by inherently evil.

Um theologically, the term that we'd use is radically evil.

So radically evil uh think radical like radish uh at the root of something.

So at our root, the thoughts of our hearts are evil.

So what does evil mean?

Evil means that our intentions are for ourselves rather than for the glory of our Creator.

And so with our intentions being just for ourselves, that means that when push comes to shove, finally we will turn on one another.

And when you look at the motivations for even the good things that we do, they aren't out of a joyful love for the God who has made us, out of a heart of gratitude for him.

Instead, they are ways of ignoring him or putting him in our debt.

They're ways of manipulating his kindness towards us, they are ways of just uh cleansing our own consciences with some sort of therapeutic reasoning.

And so when we search our hearts and we see what is really motivating even our good deeds, and if we consider that God is real and he is the ultimate good, and then we consider how are we pursuing him?

How are our hearts pursuing him?

What if I had to choose between him and me?

We always choose us.

We always choose ourselves.

That's what it means to be radically evil.

And so, what is the hope for a person in a situation like that?

Our only hope is to be rescued from the outside.

And that's the gospel.

That Jesus came to rescue us from the outside, that our hearts might be changed.

So hopefully that's a close to sufficient answer.

Let's pray.

Holy Father.

This is a hard time.

Lord God, I pray that you would sustain us through this.

God, we pray specifically that you would take away this virus.

We pray that settled into our hearts would be the truth that we are secure in you.

That our security is truly in Christ.

And because of that, we can be wise and kind in a moment like this.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.