Introduction

We’re back in the book of Genesis this morning.  As you remember, our series is called “Right from the Start.”  One way to think about going right back to the start is to see that these first chapters of Genesis are the foundation stones on which the world is built.  A foundation stone sets the direction for the structure that is built on top of it.  Everything references off of the foundation stone.  If there’s a flaw in the foundation stone, the entire structure is flawed.  These foundation stones in Genesis are great truths like, “God made the world.”  “God made man, male and female.”  “Man sinned against God, and death came into the world.”  You can’t understand the world without having these foundation stones firmly in place.  If one of these stones is broken, the entire structure crumbles.  The Great Flood is another one of these foundation stones.  You can’t understand the world rightly without the flood.  Along with the rest of Genesis, the flood explains how the world came to be the way that it is.  In the case of the flood, that’s true in a very physical sense.  Why does the earth look the way that it does when we study its features?  The flood answers that question.  But you also can’t understand human history without having this stone in place.  These foundation stones in Genesis show you what kind of world we live in.  They set the patterns that show up over and over again throughout scripture, and throughout history.  Patterns like light and darkness, male and female, work and rest, garden and city.  The flood account also sets a pattern that is at the very heart of Christian faith, and of creation itself.  That’s the pattern of death and resurrection.  The flood is the prototype death and resurrection story.  It’s a story of death as God’s judgment against sin, and resurrection as a gift of God’s kindness.  That pattern of death and resurrection echoes throughout the rest of history and finds it fullest expression in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus is on everyone’s mind right now.  We’re still in the Christmastide season.  Today is the seventh day of Christmas, New Year’s Eve - a time of celebration and new beginnings.  It may seem out of place to stop and think about the Great Flood.  But I hope we’ll see that it’s not at all out of place.  The flood account is a sobering story, but it’s also a story of new beginnings, and it’s a story that points our minds to Christ.  And not just in the general way that everything in the Bible points us to Christ, but in some very specific and intentional ways.  In that sense it is a story filled with hope.

There are a hundred different legitimate ways that you could approach this text.  It’s so rich with meaning.  If you pull any one string in this story, it just keeps coming.  But I think the text itself presents this as the main point of the story.  At its heart, the flood is a story of judgment against sin, and God’s grace to save his people through judgment and to raise them up as a new creation.  And just below the surface, we see that this salvation happens through the promised serpent crusher who comes to reverse the curse of sin and death.  This is a story about the death and resurrection of the world.  In the flood, God destroyed everything that he had made.  God killed everyone on earth, except for one man and his family, as a judgment against sin.  But through that man and his family, God preserved life, he remade the world, and he promised blessings to humanity.  “Behold the kindness and severity of God.”

If we were to break the story up into parts, we might do it like this: first, “Corruption on the earth,” then “God’s command and Noah’s obedience,” then “The flood,” and finally, “God’s promise.”  First let’s consider the problem.         

Corruption on the Earth (v1-13)

Genesis chapter two first laid the foundation stone that the consequence of sin is death.  God told Adam, “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”  We’ve seen the death of Abel at the hands of his brother.  And a number of deaths are very matter-of-factly recounted in the genealogy in chapter five.  But none of these deaths fully demonstrate the size of the problem that sin creates.  The flood is where we really learn the full implications of sin.  The flood is the great foundational demonstration of the truth that the consequence of sin is death.

So the first section of chapter six sets the stage for what follows.  Mankind in the garden was given the command to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth.  The genealogy in chapter five shows that they did just that.  This may be surprising to you.  If we just add up the years in the genealogy in chapter five, we find that 1,600 years have passed from Adam to the time of Noah.  And if you make some reasonable guesses about the size of the average family, you find that there were probably over a billion people on the earth by this time.

Now as man multiplied on the earth, what should have filled the earth with them was the glory of God.  Instead we find that man had filled the earth with violence and corruption.  In chapter one, God saw the earth, “and behold, it was very good.”  But now, in chapter six verse twelve, we see that “God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way on the earth.”  That’s the general situation.  If we back up to verse one, Moses gives us some details, though they are a bit mysterious.  He says this:

1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-5)

These first few verses of chapter six are deeply weird.  Almost every verse presents us with some mysterious string that we could pull.  Who are the “sons of God?”  Who are the Nephilim?  What does it mean that “his days shall be 120 years?”  We have to avoid the temptation to linger here.  There are two main schools of thought on this passage.  They are both plausible.  The first is that the “sons of God” are the godly descendants of Seth.  We’ve seen in recent weeks the theme of the seed of the serpent contrasted with the seed of the woman.  In chapter four, the line of Cain is connected with the seed of the serpent, and Seth is presented with hope as the godly seed of the woman.  Perhaps he’s the one who will crush the serpent and reverse the curse.  Chapter five follows the lineage of Seth all the way down to Noah, and when we get to the flood story where everything has apparently gone wrong, the natural question is, what happened to the godly line of Seth?  If you follow this reading, chapter six gives the answer.  The faithful descendents of Seth committed the sin of intermarrying with the pagan cultures around them, and that’s how things went off the rails.  “Sons of God” is a term that the Bible sometimes uses to describe God’s people.  So in this reading, the “sons of God,” meaning the descendants of Seth, intermarried with the “daughters of man,” meaning the descendents of Cain, and were corrupted as a result.  So that’s one plausible option.

The other option sounds much stranger, but it has actually been the majority position in church history.  That is that the “sons of God” are fallen angels who have taken on human form and intermarried with human women.  Angels are also sometimes called “sons of God” in the Bible.  The main thing that this argument has going for it is that it seems to be what the apostle Peter thought, as well as Jude.  We don’t have time to go there now, but if you look at 2 Peter 2:4-7 and Jude 6-7, you’ll see what I mean.  I actually lean toward the “fallen angels” reading, but as I said, both are plausible.  In any case, we can say with certainty that the sin being committed is the sin of forbidden marriage.  The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were good, and they took them as wives.  What does that remind you of?  They “saw” that something was good, and they “took” it.  That sounds like Eve in the garden.  That’s what we’re supposed to think.  This is the first of many connections between the flood account and the creation account in chapters one and two.  So this is bad.  The sons of God, whoever they are, are taking something that they were not meant to have.  This is a forbidden union, which is and always has been something that God takes very seriously.

Then, in verse three, the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”  I understand this as God telling Noah how much time will pass before the flood comes.  If we look to Peter again in 1 Peter 3, he speaks of this as a time “when God's patience waited … while the ark was being prepared.”  God tells Noah that there will be 120 years for man to repent from his wickedness before the disaster strikes.  Here is another foundation stone being laid.  While God does not leave sin unpunished, he is patient with man.  The book of Numbers says that “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty.”  This will be a theme throughout the rest of history.  Paul speaks in Romans 3 about God’s divine forbearance.  God is patient with us.  Here in Genesis six is perhaps the first example in scripture of the patience of God.

The offspring of this forbidden union are these strange beings called the Nephilim.  The Nephilim show up later in Numbers when Israel goes into Canaan, and they are described there as giants.  These Nephilim, these giants with perhaps even angelic blood in their veins, are almost too incredible to believe.  Can it really be true that fallen angels took fleshly form and intermarried with human women, producing a race of giants on the earth?  If you prefer the “line of Seth” reading, that’s fine.  Lots of godly people do.  But don’t reject the “fallen angels” view because you think it sounds crazy, or because that sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life.  We heard from Hamlet in the sermon two weeks ago.  I’ll quote him again.  “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  And if the idea of fallen angels walking around on earth is too much for you, then you had better buckle up, because it doesn’t get any less incredible as you move through this story and through the rest of your Bible.  This is another foundation stone, and it seems particularly important in our modern, materialist age.  This world is a deeply strange and spiritual place.  Make sure that you have a category for that.  You can’t understand your Bible, or the world that you live in, without that stone in place.

But the strangeness of the Nephilim isn’t the point of this passage.  The point is what follows.  “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”  The after effects of this forbidden union apparently spread across the whole earth.  “The wickedness of man was great on the earth, and every intension of his thoughts was only evil continually.”  I don’t think we’re meant to read this as hyperbole.  We’ll see in a moment that there was apparently only one exception to this description of humanity.  This is the condition of fallen man.  This is what sin does in the human heart.  It infects it like a cancer and spreads to the point where no part of us is uninfected.  It’s true now just as it has been ever since that moment when Adam ate of the fruit.

Then verse six:

6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” — Genesis 6:6-7

There are mysteries in these verses as well, but the there’s nothing mysterious about the message.  Perhaps when you hear this your first thought is that this doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means.  God doesn’t really “regret.”  God isn’t really “grieved.”  It’s true that God does not regret or grieve in the way that man does.  God doesn’t make mistakes, and God does not change his mind.  But God descends to communicate with us using language that we can understand.  God is communicating something to us here, and we need to hear what he’s saying.  Don’t explain this away to the point where it no longer startles you.  Moses knew that the “I am” who appeared to him on Mt. Sinai was not a man that he should change.  Moses himself wrote that “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.”  God could have just said, “I am opposed to the wickedness of man,” but that’s not what he said.  God said, “I am sorry that I have made them.”  That’s how much God hates sin.  None of us can peer into the being of God and say exactly what that means.  But understand what God wants us to hear.  What’s the foundation stone that’s being laid?  God hates sin.  It is completely contrary to his being.  It is repulsive to him.  If you are shocked by the idea that the timeless God of the universe could ever regret something, let the force of that shock be directed toward this thought:  how could the sinless God of the universe ever forgive the sins of man?  How could he forgive my sins?  It is a shocking thought, because sin is truly terrible, and God is truly holy.

Verse 7, “So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens.’”  To blot something out is to erase it completely, as if it were never there.  The first lesson of the flood story is that God is so holy, and sin is so terrible, that God justly and rightly wiped out every man, woman and child that he created from the face of the earth, every man and animal, everything that he had made.  He killed them all, as a righteous judgment against sin.

Except … not all.  Verse eights says, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”  That’s the second lesson of the story.  “Noah found favor” - the word means “grace” - Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.  Noah is a stark contrast to the world around him.  He and his family are the lone exception to the corruption that filled the earth, and he is the lone recipient of God’s favor.  Verse nine says that “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.”  “Blameless,” of course, doesn’t mean sinless, but Noah was a faithful man of God.  He was not guilty of the violence and corruption that had filled the earth.  He was a righteous man.  It even says that “Noah walked with God.”  That is high praise.  Only Enoch was said to have walked with God, and remember that Enoch didn’t even taste death.

Noah is, of course, a great hero of the Christian faith.  The way that Noah is presented in this story is filled with meaning.  Remember that from the moment that Adam sinned and God promised that the seed of the woman would one day crush the head of the serpent and undo the curse of sin, God’s people were on the look out for that promised deliverer.  And throughout the Bible, the various heroes of the faith are presented to us with that question in mind.  “Is this the one?”  It started with the birth of Seth at the end of chapter four, who Eve hoped would be the new Adam who would reverse the curse.  But it became clear that Seth was not the one.  Noah is the next hope for humanity.  Noah is a new Adam, and Noah is presented to us with that same question, “is he the one?”  Noah’s name means “rest,” and if you go back to the end of the chapter five, when Noah was born, we’re told that his father named him Noah, saying “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the pain of the toil of our hands.”  So Noah is a new Adam, and the question is held out to us throughout this story, “Is he the one?”  By the end of the story we’ll know the answer.  Noah is a faithful man, but he is not the one.  He points to another, yet to come.

Command to Build, Command to Enter (6:14-7:16)

The next section in the story recounts two extended speeches by God to Noah, giving Noah some detailed instructions.  In verse thirteen God announces his intensions again to Noah.  “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.  Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”  Then he tells Noah what to do.  “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood.  Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.  This is how you are to make it:”  Then he tells him, the ark should be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet tall.  It should have a roof, it should have three decks and a door in its side.

“For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven.  Everything that is on the earth shall die.  But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.  And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.  They shall be male and female.” — Genesis 6:17-19

So now we see God’s intensions laid out for Noah.  God is going to destroy all life on the earth because the earth is filled with violence through them.  He’s going to do it by means of a great flood.  But God intends to save Noah and his family from the flood.  Not only will he save Noah and his family, but he also intends to preserve his creation as well.  He will preserve life on earth by bringing two of every kind of animal onto the ark.  God will do this thing, and he will do it by means of this herculean task that he is giving Noah to do.  Then verse 22 simply says, “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.”

It’s mind-boggling if you stop and think about much work is implied in that simple sentence.  “He did all that God commanded him.”  As I understand it, there were something like 70 years that passed between the time when God first gave the command to Noah to build the ark and when the flood waters came.  The implication is that that’s how long it took Noah to build the ark.  Seventy years actually sounds about right to me.  We aren’t told anything about how he did it.  Presumably he had the help of his three sons and their wives.  But any of us who have ever built anything are blown away by the thought.  The scale of the task is truly incredible.  But more than the physical challenge, consider what a tremendous act of faith it was.  The joke goes, “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at at time.”  How do you build an ark?  One board at a time, day after day, for seventy years.  How many times must Noah have been tempted to question the sanity of what he was doing?  Consider how much opposition he must have faced from violent mockers.  The author of Hebrews says that this Herculean act of obedience was fundamentally an act of faith.

By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household.  By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. — Hebrews 11:7

The main point of the flood story is not Noah’s example to us, but Noah is very much an example to us.  You and I are also called to build.  Over the years, theologians have drawn an analogy between the ark and the church.  There is a real sense in which the church of God is an ark that carries us safely through the floodwaters of this world.  God is the great builder and architect of his church, but he builds it by means of the day-by-day, week-by-week, year-by-year building that he has given us to do.  We build in faith that God will build his church to the saving of the world, just as he did through Noah.

Then at the beginning of chapter seven, 70 years have passed since the first command was given.  Now we see the second command that God gave to Noah.  The time has come for Noah and the animals to go into the ark.

Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, 3 and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. 4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground. — Genesis 7:1-4

And then, once again, we’re simply told, “And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.”  Now the story slows way down, and we’re given this very dramatic recounting of the boarding of the ark, told in a way that is befitting of one of the most significant events in all of human history.

13 On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, 14 they and every beast, according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, according to its kind, and every bird, according to its kind, every winged creature. 15 They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. 16 And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in. — Genesis 7:13-16

Notice a couple of things.  First, can you hear the echos again of Genesis one?  “According to its kinds, according to its kind.”  The full roll call is given - man, beasts, livestock, creeping things, and birds.  All of creation is preserved, but only by being on the ark.

Also, notice that striking detail, “And the Lord shut him in.”  Noah is a faithful, obedient man of God, but he is not the hero of the story.  God is the hero of this story.  I don’t mean that in just a theological sense.  The story is written that way.  Have you ever noticed that through the entire flood story, Noah doesn’t say a single word?  We don’t know what he was thinking.  We don’t know how he felt.  He simply obeys.  Meanwhile, God is the one who does all of the talking.  We’re told what he was thinking and what he’s feeling.  He has all of the action.  God is the main character of the story.   This is a story about God and this incredible thing that he did.  Noah is an obedient servant, and the object of God’s grace.  But God is the judge and savior of the world.  To reinforce that fact, we’re told, “and the Lord shut him in.”

The ark represented the only hope of escape from God’s holy judgment.  This detail is also a reminder that while God is patient, and he does provide a door - a way to escape his holy wrath - eventually he shuts the door.  Jesus said, “I am the door.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved.”  Jesus is the only door by which we may escape the waters of God’s judgment, because he experienced them on our behalf if we come to him in faith.

After waiting patiently for 120 years, God shut the door to the ark, and all of humanity’s fate was sealed.  Then the flood waters came.

The Flood (7:11-8:22)

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. — Genesis 7:11-12

As if to underscore the fact that we’re talking about real history, and not a myth, Moses tells us the exact day in history when the flood waters came.  And they came violently.  Don’t imagine this as a long, steady rain.  It was much more violent than that.  “The fountains of the great deep burst forth.”  There are oceans of water, even now, buried under the earth.  In a moment, God opened the fountains of the deep and all of that water burst forth.  “The windows of the heavens were opened.”  This could be a dramatic way of saying that a lot of rain fell.  I suspect it means more than that.  Maybe some of you are familiar with what’s called the “canopy” theory.  That’s the idea that the earth, before the flood, was surrounded by a canopy of vaporous water that created a greenhouse effect on the earth.  This comes from the language of Genesis one, where it says that God separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above it.  I think there’s something to it.  If that’s so, this was the moment when that canopy came pouring down, and an ocean of water fell to the earth.

Verse 17 begins the climax of the story.  It’s one of the most dramatic passages in the Bible.  It describes the death of the world.

17 The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18 The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. 20 The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. 21 And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. — Genesis 7:17-24

Behold the severity of God.  Behold the holiness of God.  “God judges the world with righteousness,” as the Psalms say.  This is an awe-inspiring scene.  It was nothing less than a total unmaking of the world - the death of creation.  Moses uses language that suggests that we should think of it as a decreation - creation in reverse.  Notice that recurring phrase, “The waters increased.  The waters prevailed and increased greatly.  The waters prevailed, the waters prevailed.”  Man was told to multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over it.  But now it’s the waters that have prevailed and blotted man out from the earth.  In verse 23, “He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground,” and then Moses lists them in the reverse order in which they were created.  “Man, animals, creeping things and birds of the heavens.  They were blotted out from the earth.”  And finally the waters have prevailed so mightily on the earth that we’re all the way back to where we started in Genesis one, verse two.  The waters cover the face of the earth.  The earth is without form and void.  In chapter eight, verse two, we even see that God made a wind blow over the earth, and our minds are called back to the Spirit of God that hovered over the face of the waters at the beginning of creation.

So it was done.  The waters of God’s judgment covered the earth and wiped out every living thing that he had made.  It’s crucial to remember that God was absolutely good and right in what he did.  The consequence of sin is death.  It is one of the great foundation stones that this world is built on.

If this were a story about any of the other so-called gods of the ancient world, that might be the end of it.  Simply a story of offense committed and punishment given.  But that’s not how this story ends.  The most important sentence in the whole account is verse one of chapter eight.  “But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark.”  The true story is not merely a story of judgment again sin, but also of grace.  Not just death, but also resurrection.  Not only a decreation, but a recreation.

This beautiful word about God’s grace to Noah and those with him on the ark is very literally the center of this story.  We’re going to get nerdy for a minute.  This kind of thing is really fun.  The flood story has a very intentional structure to it.  It’s actually a very common structure in the Bible.  It’s called a chiasm.  A chiasm builds toward a central idea, and then mirrors itself and echos the first half in reverse order.  The word “chiasm” comes from the greek letter “chi,” which is an “X.”  So think of the shape of an “X,” where you move toward the center, and then go back out in reverse order.  The idea at the center is the one that is highlighted.  So in this story, for example, at the beginning God resolves to destroy all mankind.  At the end he resolves never to destroy all mankind again.  Those two ideas go together and form one layer of the chiasm.  Then you move in one layer, and Noah builds an ark, while at in the second half of the story Noah builds an alter.  That’s another layer.  The next layer, the flood beginning corresponds to the earth drying out.  The flood waters rising pairs with the flood waters receding.  You get the idea.  The whole flood story is structured this way, and the central idea is this sentence: “God remembered Noah.”  Moses wrote the story in a way that draws attention to this sentence.  Yes, the flood is absolutely a story about God’s judgment of sin, but the text suggests that this is most important part of the story.  “God remembered Noah.”  The word “remembered” obviously doesn’t mean that God had forgotten about Noah.  It means that at the height of God’s righteous judgment of sin, God thought about Noah and had favor on him.

In scripture, when God “remembers,” he acts.  Again, God made a wind to blow over the earth, and we’re reminded of the Spirit of God that hovered over the face of the waters at the beginning of the first creation.  So also begins the recreation of the world - the resurrection of creation.  It’s interesting and important to see how the receding flood waters in chapter eight parallel the creation account in chapter one.  First, the wind blowing over the water harkens back to day one of creation.  Then in verse two, “The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed,” echoing the separation of the waters above from the waters below on day two.  Then as the waters recede and are gathered together, the dry land appears, just as it did on day three.  Then we have the beautiful scene with Noah and dove.  Three times he sends out a dove.  The first two times the dove comes back to him.  The third time the dove doesn’t return, so Noah knows that the earth has dried out.  That reminds us of day five, when God first said, “let birds fly above the earth.”  And finally, God commands Noah and the animals come out from the ark, echoing day six of creation.  God does this kind of thing in the Bible.  There are many things being said in this passage, but God wants us to see that what’s happening here is a new creation - a resurrected creation.  That’s the stone that’s being laid.  It’s beautiful.  Again, because this is history, we’re told the exact day when it happened:

13 In the six hundred and first 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. 14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out. 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. 17 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.” —  Genesis 8:13-17

So the new creation received the same blessing and the same command as the first.  “Be fruitful and multiply” and fill the earth.

“So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark.” — Genesis 8:18-19

That’s the story of the death and resurrection of the world.  Just as God was good and right in dealing out death to the world as the consequence of sin.  He was also good and right, and kind, in giving the world new life.  Death is never the end of the story with God.

Let’s pause for a brief digression before we move on.  There is a very great deal of work that has gone into trying to understand from a scientific and geological standpoint whether what we read in this chapter in Genesis could have actually happened.  Where did all of the water in the flood come from, and then where did it go?  Could an ark really hold the number of animals that would have been needed?  Does the geological record match what’s described here?  That’s a worthwhile discussion.  Obviously I think there are good answers to all of those questions, and it can be encouraging as a Christian to be familiar with some of those answers.  There are lots of good books and resources (as well as some bad ones) that address these questions.  As you think about that and perhaps engage in that debate with other people, remember a couple of things.  

First, don’t forget that just as the creation week was fundamentally a week of miracles, the flood was also a miracle of God.  We can talk about the science of the flood, but don’t fall into the trap of looking for explanations for the flood that will be satisfactory to an unbeliever.  That’s a fruitless endeavor.  Remember that God is the lead actor in this story.  If you’re looking for a respectable middle way that treats the flood as real history, but that doesn’t have the active, all-powerful hand of God at the center of it, you won’t find it.  You’ll end up doing some bad theology and some bad science.  It’s good to look for evidence of the flood in nature, but remember that the flood was a supernatural act of God.  

Secondly, remember that there is no such thing as neutrality.  If you want to talk about myths, the greatest myth of all is the myth of neutrality.  What I mean is that everyone - there are no exceptions - everyone looks at the world either through eyes of faith or unbelief.  We all come to these questions having already decided in our hearts that either God exists and is who he says he is, or that God does not exist and cannot be considered in our search for an explanation for why things look the way that they do.  So there is no such things as a neutral pursuit of science.  As Christians who are interested in science, we look at the earth and say, “Yeah, that looks more or less as I would expect given what the Bible says.”  Or we say, “Hmm, that’s not what I expected to see, but I know that God’s word is true, so let’s think about what we might have gotten wrong.”  The unbelieving scientist looks at the world and says, “I know that God had nothing to do with this,” so they have to construct a story that leaves him out.  The work of apologetics is to look at their story and compare it to ours, and ask questions like, “Which story better explains the world?”

Because it’s a foundation stone, in some ways the most important thing that you can say about the flood is that it really happened.  You can’t build on an imaginary foundation.  If the Flood is just a children’s story, then God didn’t actually destroy the earth and kill everyone in it because of the wickedness of sin.  If it’s just a story, then maybe sin isn’t bad enough to actually deserve death - real, physical death - in which case, maybe Jesus didn’t really have to come and die in our place.  But if God really did kill every man, woman and child on earth, except for one man and his family, because of sin, then sin really is that terrible.

And if it’s just a story, then perhaps there is no hope of resurrection.  If Genesis is just a myth, then the whole Bible is just a myth, and Jesus wasn’t actually raised from the dead.  In that case, there is no hope for life after death for you and I.  Death comes to us all, and that’s the end.  But if God really did preserve his people through judgment, and recreate the world through them, then there really is a hope for our resurrection as well.

So the most important thing you can say about the flood is that it really happened.  This is no metaphor.  The flood sets the pattern.  After this, water becomes a metaphor and a symbol of God’s judgment.  You see that in places like Isaiah and in the Psalms.  The pattern that was set by the flood shows up over and over again for the rest of history.  Israel at the Red Sea comes to mind.  There also, the waters of judgment wipe out the enemies of God, but his people are brought safely through.  All of that symbolism points back to the flood.

God’s Promise (8:20-22)

Let’s pick back up at the end of chapter eight and consider God’s promise to Noah and to humanity.  The first thing that Noah did after he left the ark was to build an alter and offer sacrifices to God.

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 done. 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”  And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” — Genesis 8:21-9:1           

Daniel is going to cover chapter nine and God’s covenant with Noah in detail next week.  I just want us to consider a couple of things.  We’ve seen the severity and holiness of God on display.  Now consider his kindness.  Picture the scene.  In front of that alter, Noah stood before God as a new Adam, representing all of humanity.  He made a sacrifice to God, and God responded to him with favor.  God made a promise, “I will never again curse the ground because of man … neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.”  Then Noah received the blessing that Adam received.  “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”  This all sounds very promising.  Perhaps Noah is the one, after all, who has brought rest - relief from the curse.  But there’s a problem hinted at even here.  “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”  Apparently man’s nature hasn’t changed after the flood.  Sin still remains.  This suggests that God’s promise is not given because the situation has been resolved, but rather this is another example of the patience and forbearance of God.  And any illusions that Noah was the promised serpent crusher are quickly dashed.  If we skip ahead to the end of chapter nine, we see that the new creation experiences a fall, just like the first creation did.  Noah planted a vineyard.  In the course of time, he drank wine and became drunk in his tent.  His son Ham went into his tent and “saw the nakedness” of his father and then shamed him by telling his brothers.  His brothers then discreetly covered their father, and when Noah awoke and realized what Ham had done, Noah cursed Ham’s son, Canaan.  There are some mysterious things about that story as well, but I think we’re meant to see it as a fall of the resurrected creation.  It echos the original fall in some interesting ways.  There’s a garden, fruit, nakedness, covering, and shame, all ending in a curse.  So sin remains.  Noah is not the one.

If you’re an angel looking down on this scene, you might see this and say, “Hang on a minute.  How can this be?  If the consequence of sin is death, and man’s nature is still sinful, and Noah is not the serpent crusher, then how can God promise that he will never do this again?”  The answer is clear.  If Noah is not the one, there will have to be another.  The foundation stone has been laid.  Death - total destruction - is the righteous consequence of sin.  And yet death is not the end.  God preserves a people through judgment and raises them up as a new creation.  If that’s all true, then there will have to be another.  There was another, of course.  The whole world celebrated his coming this week.  The surprising part of the story is that when the true serpent crusher came, he crushed the serpent and reversed the curse by actually experiencing death himself.  He was not spared, as Noah was.  He experienced the waters of God’s judgment.  And the only way for us to be spared is to come in through the door and be united to him, such that his experience of the flood waters counts on our behalf.

The New Testament talks this way about Jesus, connecting the gospel to the flood.  Jesus himself talked this way.  When James and John asked Jesus whether they could sit at his right and left hand in glory, Jesus asked them, speaking about his upcoming death, whether they could be baptized with the baptism with which he was baptized.  It seems a bit strange for Jesus to refer to his death as a baptism, but when you have the flood in your mind as the backdrop, maybe you start to get an idea.  Paul also, in 1 Corinthians, referred to Israel’s passing through the Red Sea as a baptism.  So what does baptism have to do with all of this?  Peter, once again, offers some help.  Peter says in 1 Peter 3, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”  That’s great.  That’s just solid gospel stuff.  But then Peter’s mind goes to the flood.  He speaks somewhat mysteriously of the time when Christ “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.”  Then he says that “Baptism, which corresponds to this [meaning “corresponds to the flood”], 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.”  If we get too distracted by the jarring statement that “baptism now saves you,” then we’ll miss Peter’s point, which is about the gospel.  Peter says that baptism corresponds to the flood.  I think we all know that baptism is a picture of death and resurrection.  But not just any death.  Death through water.  When we are baptized in faith into the body of Christ, we are united to him in his baptism - his watery death - and in his resurrection.  In baptism, we symbolically experience the flood waters of God’s judgment in Christ.  And in baptism we symbolically experience his resurrection.  We are a new creation in him.

Every time you witness a Christian baptism, I hope that, just like Peter, a part of your mind goes back to the great flood, and you are overcome with gratitude for what God has done for you in Christ.  As with so many other things in life, the question is not whether, but which.  Each person will experience the flood waters of God’s judgment one way or the other.  It’s not whether, but which.  You will either experience them yourself, or in Christ.  For those outside of Christ, when God shuts the door, the judgment will be as severe as it was on those souls who filled the earth with violence in Noah’s day.  But for those in Christ, who have received his gracious favor and gladly entrusted their safety to him, then we experience the flood waters through him, who plumbed them on our behalf.  Christ went through those waters and came out on the other side.  And in him, so have you.  You are a new creation in him.

It’s New Year’s Eve.  The passing of the old year and the coming of the new is one more example of the death and resurrection theme that God seems to love so much.  As the whole world celebrates tonight with lights and fireworks, be mindful of the foundation stone that all of it rests on.  Death and resurrection has been a theme from the very beginning.  We no longer fear judgment or death, and we have cause to celebrate because of the great gift of resurrected life that was given to us by Jesus Christ, our Cornerstone.