GENESIS 6:22-7:23
22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
7 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate,3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”
5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.
6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth.7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood.8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground,9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings.15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark.16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.
17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth.18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water.19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
GENESIS 6:22-7:23 HOW DID NOAH KNOW GOD? Springford Baptist Church: January 9, 2022.
Last week we were discovering through the account of Adam and Eve, that God did intend a close and personal relationship with the people that He created. He wants us to know Him in the stillness.
That unique relationship with God was affected by sin which separates us from God, but Jesus is able to restore us to the kind of relationship with God that He originally intended.
God wants to walk and talk with us in the stillness as He did with Adam and Eve in the Garden.
This week we have a chance to consider Noah and what we can learn about God and knowing God through Noah’s experience.
The Flood shows the extent to which God will go to bring about holiness and rest on the earth.
Only one other event shows that holiness among people is the thing for which God will sacrifice everything else. That event is the crucifixion of God’s own Son, Jesus!
I am struck by the repeated phrase throughout the account of Noah and the Flood, “Noah did everything just as God commanded him.” (Genesis 6:22)
We learn from the outset that Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. There was nothing they could hold against him. Noah, in a faithful way walked with God. (Genesis 6:9)
Yes, Noah did find “favour in the eyes of the Lord.” The way that Noah was living his life pleased God. Noah’s life of devotion to God and living God’s way is a sharp contrast to the lives of his neighbours, the people around him. Their intense wickedness is what prompted God to arrange for a fresh start, a new beginning.
Gen.6:6 “The Lord was grieved that He had made man on the earth and His heart was filled with pain.”
Based on past experience, God knew that He could trust Noah to do what He asked and Noah already knew that He could trust God. Noah knew God as One who keeps His promises.
This reality of the Lord God who keeps His promises proved true through all that Noah saw happen.
It was good that Noah was already in the habit of obeying God because what God was asking of Him in building the ark was literally a “tall order.”
When God gave Noah the instructions for the construction of the ark, Noah set about doing what God said.
The theatre production of “Noah’s Ark” that my husband Bob and I saw in Lancaster, Pennsylvania emphasized what was most likely the case while Noah was building the ark. The ridicule and questions that Noah’s neighbours probably raised when he started to build the ark was portrayed:
“Hey Noah, what are you doing”?
“I am building an ark.”
“Why would you do that”?
“God told me too.”
“What do you need an ark for”?
“There’s going to be heavy, heavy rain. A flood is coming.”
Even as Noah answered these persistent questions, it all seemed so unlikely…
Yet Noah had been told by God that this was what he must do in order for he and his family to be saved.
He had a choice about whether to concern himself with what people around him thought or with what God thought.
Did he trust people or God?
Noah chose to trust God.
He chose to believe what God said, what God promised, and as a result he and his family were spared. Their lives were saved.
There is a pattern here. If God can trust us with smaller things, there is the opportunity and possibility for God to trust us with bigger things. Perhaps it will be something really big, as it was for Noah.
At any time Noah could have lost his nerve and said, “No I can’t do this. I am not the one for this job.”
I am convinced that Noah had come to know God and to trust God as faithful. If this was the one chance to save his family, he was going to grab hold of it.
How do you think you would respond if God asked you to do something remarkable, like building an ark?
“No way, I can’t do that”!
“Not right now, I am busy with some other things.”
“Please ask someone else.”
“Is it really necessary? How soon is this flood coming”?
So often our human tendency is to want to know God’s will and God’s direction. Yet, when He shows it to us, we start making excuses about why we cannot come through or why there should be another way.
Noah’s choice was not easy!
His choice of obedience and trusting God’s promise meant a great deal of prolonged hard work and it meant ridicule and misunderstanding. It meant people considering him a fool.
However, when the rains began and the flood waters rose and Noah and his family were safe in the ark, Noah knew he had made the right decision. (Genesis 7:23)
He had trusted God, the God he walked with closely and God brought things about just as He said. Noah knew God in a way that few people have known God.
If we are people who trust God, there will be things He asks of us, just as He did with Noah.
It may be that our faithful obedience to God will result in family and friends being saved, being spared from the outcome of sin and wickedness in our world.
When Noah and his family members were finally able to leave the ark and to step on to dry land, they built an altar and made a sacrifice there in worship to the God who had saved them, the God who had kept His promises. (Genesis 8:20)
God was pleased with the sacrifice, pleased that Noah and his family had been obedient and had trusted Him. (Genesis 8:21)
Then God made a lasting covenant and the sign of His promise that he would never again destroy the earth with a flood, was a rainbow that He placed in the sky. (Genesis 9:11-13)
The rainbow remains for us, all these generations later, a reminder of God’s promise. It is a reminder that God keeps His promises.
In our desire to know God, we can know that He promises that He will save us and our families through our Saviour, Jesus Christ. As Noah discovered in knowing God, our God always keeps His promises!!