-Genesis 8:21-22
This past weekend I enjoyed an awesome time on the Lawrence County Youth Ministry Fall Retreat. It was a good time of worshipping and learning and connecting and growing. BPSM was represented by nine students who enjoyed Splash Lagoon, food, and hanging out with friends. The theme of the weekend was H20, and the teachings revolved around passages in Scripture about water, such as "The Woman at the Well," "Jesus Walks on Water," and "Noah's Ark." It was this last one that got me thinking about a story all Christians are told from the time they're young children. We know this story inside and out. It's been turned into countless children's books and movies. It's been compared to the myths of other cultures and its been analyzed for its historical veracity. But are we missing the point? Have we remained too shallow in our study of this ancient story? Have we pulled this Scripture out of the context of the storyline of the Bible?
As I heard the lesson taught on Sunday, I recounted numerous occasions where I heard the story of how God was sorry He created mankind and commanded Noah to build a big boat to save him and his family from the total destruction God was about to deliver to the wicked people of the earth. God would wipe out every living creature from the earth except eight humans, seven of each clean animal and two of every unclean animal. The flood waters rose and destroyed every animal and man that roamed the earth. After a little over a year, the waters receded and Noah's family and all the animals on the ark were able to step back onto land and repopulate the earth.
Now that we remember what happened, we can ask "Why did it happen?" Most people would read the first nine chapters of Scripture and suggest that God was simply correcting a mistake He had made. Maybe God messed up in creating man and forgot to account for the entrance of sin into the world. Maybe Satan had won in the first millenium of creation and God had to start the battle over by using the flood to reboot. However, this does not sound like the sovereign God I have come to know and love throughout the rest of Scripture. So why?
Certainly God had allowed sin to enter and overtake the world He had created. He had planned for the flood to wipeout mankind before He even created mankind. Why? To point to and glorify Christ. Was Noah so good that God couldn't condemn him to death? Most definitely not. Not long after the flood, his sons find him drunk, passed out, and naked in his tent. Why Noah? Because he found favor with God; God chose him. It was by faith as Hebrews 11 tells us that Noah obeyed God. And this faith is a gift from God as Ephesians 2 tells us. So it was God's grace that covered the sins of Noah and his family with the blood of Christ so that they could be saved from the damnation the rest of the world faced. It is by God's grace that He covers us with the blood of Christ to be saved from the full extent of His wrath. In the first nine chapters of Scripture, God is already pointing to the beautiful picture of salvation found in Christ. Jesus Christ is the ark that saves us, pulls us out of God's wrath and into His kingdom. Jesus tells Nicodemus that we must die and be born again in order to see the kingdom of God. The flood is the earliest and most immense picture of this rebirth. And God declares rebirth to be the normal cycle in the world in Genesis 8:22 (above) in an effort to point to Christ and the resurrection he delivers to us by his death and resurrection. Amazing! Amen!
So as the winter draws near and the leaves fall from the trees and animals go into hibernation, as the harvest is complete and the ground dies in the cold weather, let us not forget the death of our Savior, Christ Jesus to atone for the penalty of our sins. And as we see Springtime rebirth in a few months, let us remember the resurrection Christ offers to our mortal bodies to free us from the power of sin. May the entirety of Scripture and the whole of creation constantly point us to beauty and glory of Christ, our Lord and Savior.
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