Genesis 7
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Let me invite you to take a Bible and turn over to Genesis chapter 7. That's where we're going to be today as we continue this study of the book of Genesis. If you're new to Third Avenue, welcome. We're glad to have you here. We are a church that does what's known in some circles anyway as at least what I call expositional preaching, which means that for the next few minutes what we're going to do is open up the Bible, which we understand to be the Word of God written down without error and perfectly infallible as to its purposes. And we're going to open it up to Genesis chapter 7, a short passage of Scripture. We're going to read it, and then I'm going to spend a few moments just explaining that passage to you as the congregation, and then hopefully applying it to our lives as Christians, as non-Christians, as human beings. So that's what we're going to be doing this morning. If you're new here, you're going to be kind of dropping into the middle of a story. So let me give you a little bit of a running start as we get up to Genesis chapter 7. For the last few weeks we've been looking at this series
anyway is going to end in Genesis chapter 11. It's going to run right up until Christmas and so we're spending these these few weeks looking at Genesis chapters 1 through 11 which tell the story of what's called the primeval age. So the first age of human beings on planet earth. This is God's creation of the human beings and then the first actions of the first human beings and we've made our way all the way up through chapter six now, which is right in the middle of a story that runs through chapter nine. So we're going to be in this story for quite a while. And it's the story of Noah and the ark and the flood. Now my guess is that you don't even really have to be a Christian to have heard of the story of Noah and the ark. So what do you think of? Like what's the first image that comes into your mind when I say the words Noah and the ark if you're like me the first image that comes into your mind is of a cute little ship with a white bearded Noah standing
on the front of it sometimes with a white bird in his hand and he's very happy and he's smiling and behind him sticking out the windows of the ark and you know on the decks of the ark you've got giraffe necks that are sticking out with maybe some musical signs above them because for some reason they're singing and then you've got a turtle on the deck of the ship and it just looks like a party boat that's what it looks like it looks like the ark is a party boat a sort of floating zoo and everybody is happy well i think what you're going to see today in genesis chapter 7 is that that's not what noah's ark was all about at all noah's ark is not a happy story including a floating zoo that tells us happy things it's a story of judgment and it's terrifying and I think you're going to see that as we look at this story today this is really a critical moment in history the flood because essentially what's going on in the grand scheme of things is
that God is essentially declaring that Adam's race has failed Adam's race its wickedness has gotten so rank, its rebellion and sin against God has gotten so abominable that there's really nothing to do but cut the whole thing back to the root and start over with the most righteous person alive on the planet at the time. And that's really what's going on. God is just cutting the tree down and instead of wiping the human race out, I mean that would have been one option for him, but he doesn't want to do that and completely start over. So he takes the most righteous person on the planet at the time and says I'm going to start over with you and the whole story is meant to teach us that sin's claws are deep in human beings sin is not a small problem when when Adam rebelled against God it plunged the entire human race into a captivity that it would never be able to rescue itself from and so all that's left is maybe just maybe to think that that problem can be solved by
just starting over. So that's what God does. Noah becomes a kind of new Adam. He becomes a new start for the human race. But before that new start can happen, first comes the judgment. First comes the chopping down of the tree. First comes the destruction of the rest of the human race, except for Noah and his family. And that's what we're going to look at today in chapter 7. When we left Noah last week, God had essentially given him detailed instructions on how to build the ark and what to bring with him into the ark. Remember, you're supposed to build it out of gopher wood, and it's going to be this big and this wide and this high, and it's going to have three decks and rooms in it, and you're going to bring animals and stores and provisions into the ark so that life can start over once the flood has subsided. That's what God told him to do at the end of chapter 6.
Well, when chapter 7 opens, you'll notice if you even just look down at chapter 7, verse 1, All of a sudden, the ark is ready to go. Like, we get no narrative whatsoever about the ark actually being built. That just doesn't seem to be the point. God gives the instructions at the end of 6, and at the end of 7, we're ready to go. The ark is built, and God gives the word that the time has come. You're going to notice as we read chapter 7 today that it is highly dramatic. It is one of the most dramatic chapters in the entire Bible.
and it creates that drama with certain literary conventions and literary tools. So, for example, you're going to notice as I read it in just a minute that it tends to repeat the same words over and over and over again. It also tends to sort of tell the events that happened in one case and then talk about some other events and then go back and tell the whole thing again and then tell the whole thing again. It's sort of drawing this picture over and over again. And in the process of doing that, with those repeated words and telling the events again and again and again, it makes you feel the anxiety.
It makes you feel the rising tension and fear as the winds begin to blow and the rain begins to fall. So I want you to feel that, and I want you to experience it even as we read right now. Genesis chapter 7, starting in verse 1. 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. 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, 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.
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. And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters came up on the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground. Two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah as God had commanded Noah.
And after seven days, the waters of the flood came up on the earth. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened, and rain fell upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights. 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, 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.
They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in. The flood continued 40 days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered.
The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them 15 cubits deep, and all flesh died that moved on the earth. Birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind, everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heaven. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.
You see what I'm talking about there? It's a story of judgment, and it's terrifying. And you see how even in the reading of it, even in the way Moses wrote it, this sort of back-and-forth movement of the way it tells the story almost feels like waves, doesn't it? And the way each time it goes back to one of these sort of literary panels, you might say, Noah going into the ark and the flood strike, the way it tells those things again and again feels like waves, And the way it adds a little bit of detail every time it returns to one of those events feels to you like the water's rising.
Until in the last few verses, all you've got is the flood. There's nothing else. Just like there was nothing else when the waters rose. There's a literary genius in that that I think is just mind-blowing. It's just incredible that the Holy Spirit through Moses uses these words to make us feel that rising anxiety. And you probably noticed, even as I've been talking, that what it does, structurally anyway, it creates an interesting structure.
What it does structurally is that the story basically focuses on two events that it bounces back and forth between throughout the entire story. Those two events are Noah's entry into the ark and then the flood itself. You notice that? It tells those stories again and again. Noah going into the ark, and then the flood happening. So let me tell you how this thing breaks down. Verses 1 to 5 are Noah's entry into the ark. Then verse 6 is the flood. Then 7 through 9 is Noah's entry into the ark. And then 10 through 12 is the flood.
Then 13 to 16 is Noah's entry into the ark. And 17 through 24, finally, is the flood. So what do you think the story wants you to focus on as you read this story? It wants you to focus on Noah's entry into the ark and the flood itself. It wants you to have your eyes squarely on Noah and then squarely on the waters. Why? Well, because this isn't just a story that exists in ancient cultures about a one-time event. That's not what this is. It has lessons for us.
The text wants you to see the story of Noah and the flood as a kind of invitation, a kind of warning, a kind of promise, in fact. A down payment on the reality that our God is both a God of judgment and a God of grace. In other words, you're supposed to read this story of Noah and the ark and not just think, wow, that's an interesting story and I have some scientific questions about it. What you're supposed to do is read this story and think, oh, now I know better who God is and what God wants from me.
I know him better because I've read this story and I even know better what he wants from me. That's the main idea. Here's what I think the main idea is. God's judgment against sin is inevitable and overwhelming. God's judgment against sin is inevitable and overwhelming, and yet He shows grace to those who will trust Him. God's judgment against sin is inevitable and overwhelming, and yet He shows grace to those who will trust Him.
So because we've got this kind of back-and-forth structure, we're not going to be able to just step through the story kind of one piece at a time. as we go through the sermon. It just wouldn't work, right? We'd be returning back and forth to the same point again and again and again. Instead, what we're going to do is look at those two major themes in the chapter, even as they alternate, the entry to the ark and the flood, and we're going to see what we can learn from them, see what lessons we can draw from them. And we're going to do it a little bit backwards. So first, we're going to look at the passages about the flood as a kind of backdrop to Noah, what he was actually dealing with, right? And then we're going to look at Noah's entry into the ark so two points to the sermon number one the inevitable overwhelming judgment of God and then number two the certain promise of saving grace the inevitable overwhelming judgment of God and then the certain promise of grace my prayer as we study this text this morning is that you if you're a Christian will see and feel anew just how deep is your need for a Savior and that you'll trust in Jesus even more deeply. And maybe my prayer also for you is
that maybe if you're not a Christian, you'll see for the very first time the dire straits that you are in, the judgment that you're under and your need for a Savior. So point number one, the inevitable overwhelming judgment of God. The story in chapter 7 turns to the waters of the flood. It puts our attention on the flood three different times in this chapter. So the first time it happens is in verse 6, where you've just got this bare notice that the waters came up on the earth, right? Then you've got verses 10 to 12 with a much more evocative description of the fountains of the great deep opening up in the windows of heaven, water pouring out the windows of heaven. Much more evocative description, and there's meaning in that that we'll talk about later. But you see how first you just get a bare statement, then you get a kind of evocative description, and then finally in 17 to 24 the flood completely takes over the narrative much like it completely triumphs the text says or prevails over the whole earth it prevails over the narrative too it just swallows you up and that's how it works that's where the flood shows up but let's take a minute here to
talk about the sort of flashing red question that this text always brings up which is is the bible here in Genesis 6 through 9, and particularly in 7, is it really trying to say that there was actually a worldwide flood that covered the entire earth? Is it actually saying that? For most of history, nobody doubted that. Nobody doubted that that's exactly what Genesis 6 through 9 was talking about. And in fact, a worldwide flood, it turns out, if you start to look at all the evidence, is mentioned in a lot of different cultures.
There are ancient accounts literally from around the globe that talk about this idea of a catastrophic flood and a small band of people who survived it. Now, the details are different. It's not always Noah. Sometimes the names are interestingly related to the Hebrew letters N-O-A-H, right? Sometimes it's interestingly related, but it's different characters. It's different details. There's different stuff happening. But this idea of a catastrophic flood and a few people who survived it on a boat, it shows up all over cultures, all over the world.
It's made its way into the legends, at least, of all these cultures. But since the 19th century, so by saying that, what I mean for you to get from that is not very long. Since the 19th century, not very long, some people have started to doubt that this idea of a catastrophic worldwide flood could possibly be true. And so they've made all kinds of objections to that idea. So, for example, how could you get that much water, right? If you're going to cover the entire earth, and somebody did the math, and to get the water as high as, you know, 15 cubits above Mount Everest, if Mount Everest even existed, you would need the entire earth to be covered with, like, 8 miles of water.
How do you get that much water, the objection goes. How could the animals from all over the world have gotten to Noah? That's another question. There's all kinds of things, all kinds of objections that people have raised to the idea of a worldwide flood. And so they've said, well, okay, maybe in light of these objections, maybe it wasn't a worldwide flood that covered the entire planet. Maybe it was just a local flood in a particular area and not a universal flood.
That's the objection that's made. Now, we don't have time for me to give you a comprehensive rundown of all the back and forth that happens between those who say it was a worldwide flood and those who say it wasn't. We just don't have time for it. I mean, there is so much evidence and counter evidence and counter counter evidence and what ifs and maybe they could'ves, and no, they couldn't'ves. There is so much of that that we could do that we would be here for days. If you want to look at some of that, honestly, I would tell you, go to the Creation Museum and the Ark up in northern Kentucky.
They're actually really well done, and they do a lot of that kind of work if you're really interested in it. Some people look at that, and they say, oh, but that's so much speculation that goes on at the Ark. Well, duh, yes, it's all speculation, right? The Bible doesn't tell us a whole lot about how the Ark worked, And so the game is to try to figure out, is this plausible? Can we speculate about ways that they could have done things in order to make this work? And the Ark up in northern Kentucky gives a really good shot at that. So I would commend that to you if you're interested in that sort of thing.
It's all fascinating. It's all bewildering when you start looking at the evidence. And you're free to pursue that as far as you want to. I don't want to make that case to you, though. I don't want to make a geographic, archaeological, geological case to you. What I want to do instead is give you five reasons to think that the Bible, at least, is teaching a worldwide flood. Five reasons to think that the Bible is teaching a worldwide flood. Now, you can say that the Bible is wrong if you want to, but that's a whole other question, right?
Because we as Christians believe that the Bible is true. And so if it is teaching that there was a worldwide flood, then the geology and all the rest of it, we can kind of shelve and say, look, the Bible teaches that there was a worldwide flood. There was. Now let's look at the evidence and try to speculate as to how it all worked. But we start with what the Bible teaches. What I want to try to convince you of is that you can't, you can disagree with the Bible. You know, you do that if you're brave enough to do that. But what you can't get away with is saying that you can read Genesis chapters 6 through 9 and fit into it a localized flood.
I want to try to convince you that you can't do that. The Bible teaches a universal worldwide flood. And I want to give you five reasons to think that that's true. First, there's just the overwhelmingly universal language of this chapter itself. I mean, look at how many times here the text uses this kind of universal language. Every, all, whole, everything. You can see it in four, every living thing. 19, under the whole heaven. 21, all flesh.
22, everything. 23, every living thing. And then in 23, it ends the whole thing with this symbol crash of only Noah was left. Now, is it true in the Bible and elsewhere that sometimes the words all and every and words like those don't necessarily mean every single individual that is in existence? Yes, of course that's true. But when the Bible piles up this much language, honestly, when any author piles up this much language, what it's trying to do is remove exactly that kind of ambiguity.
It wants you convinced by the end of this chapter that only Noah was left. The language is universal. Second, there's just in the narrative the sheer amount of time it took for the flood to happen and then to recede, which doesn't begin to make sense if this was just a local flood. It's an enormous amount of time. So think about it. I'm going to read off a bunch of stats to you. You can look at them later. Think about it. It's all right in the text. Some of it in chapter 8.
So if you're looking for it, you may have to jump ahead to chapter 8. But think about it. It was 110 days after the rains stopped. 110 days before the bottom of the ark was even able to touch Mount Ararat. Then it was 10 weeks after that that the tops of the other mountains became visible. Then it was 21 more weeks before the waters had receded enough for Noah and his family to get off the boat. So altogether, when you put all those numbers together, what you get is that this flood took over a year from the beginning of the rains until the waters had dried up.
Now that's an insane amount of time if this was just a local flood. The sheer amount of time does not make sense with a local flood. Third, the story of the ark itself doesn't make sense if it was just a local flood. The whole story of the boat doesn't make sense if it was just a local flood. And there are a lot of details that don't make sense. So, for example, why, if this is just a local flood and the rest of the planet's okay, why did Noah need to bring animals onto the ark to repopulate the earth if there were animals just outside the flood zone who could have walked right back into the land once the waters receded?
Why go to all the trouble to bring all these animals together? And why, for that matter, did he need a boat anyway for a local flood? Think about the chronology of it. If you put it all together, from the time God told Noah to build the ark until the time the rain started, do you know how long that was? It was 120 years. From the time God told him what was about to happen to the time that it happened was 120 years. Friends, how far can you walk in 120 years?
A long way. And it would have made just as much a dramatic story in the Bible if it had just been God coming to Noah and saying, I'm going to flood this zone, and I need you to walk out of it so that you can be saved. You'd have a great sort of, you know, judgment is coming and salvation, exodus story. That's exactly what you would have had, but that's not what the Bible does. It says he needed a boat, and it gave him 120 years to build it. that detail demands a worldwide flood to even make sense. Here's the fourth thing.
God's promise in chapter 9, verse 11, never to destroy the world again by flood, only makes sense if it was a worldwide flood. The promise never to destroy the world again by flood only makes sense if it was a worldwide flood. You know what has never happened again since the flood? of Noah? You know what's never happened again? A worldwide flood. Do you know what has happened hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times? Really terrible local floods.
So if you're going to say that it was a local flood, you're going to have to understand God to be saying in 9-11, I will not send a local flood to destroy people's lives again. A promise that he hasn't kept. That only makes sense if this flood was worldwide. Fifth, and this is really just the capstone of the argument the new testament presupposes a worldwide flood the new testament itself presupposes a worldwide flood there are several different places but let me read you a passage from second peter chapter three here's what peter writes for they these are false teachers people who are not believers these people deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of god and then by means of these waters the world that then existed was deluged with water and it perished okay so he's got a picture of of the judgment of the flood now listen to listen to how he uses that picture of the flood he says by the same word the same word that brought the flood the
same word of god that brought the flood by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire being kept until the day of judgment and the destruction of the ungodly so you see what he's doing there? You see how he's using the flood? He's paralleling the flood to the day of judgment. And the day of judgment is universal and worldwide. So when Peter grabs the flood to talk about the day of judgment, he's presupposing that the two are parallel, that the two are worldwide. So the Bible, so those five reasons, the Bible, without a doubt, says that this flood was worldwide. But whether it was or not, I mean, as Christians, we look at that and we say, yeah, the Bible teaches it, so I believe it. Now I'll go look at the evidence. But whether or not the flood was worldwide is not really the point. I mean, the Bible just tells the story, right? And its point is not to try to convince you with any kind of evidence, really, that the flood was worldwide or that it happened. That's not what it's doing. What you're supposed to be
focusing on is really what Peter, in that passage that I just read to you, is focusing on. That this flood is really an eschatological sort of end times event it's a pouring out of judgment on a sinful world and that pouring out of judgment is supposed to make you think forward to the final day of judgment that God has promised is coming to you and me so a few thoughts about that for one thing things about the flood that will teach us about the coming day of judgment for one thing You need to see the eschatological nature of this flood that I was just describing to you.
You need to see that it's not just a kind of singular event like all other events in the scriptures. So look at verse 11. This amazing verse in the middle of chapter 7. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were open now what's the picture that's being drawn there we have a very specific dating of the flood people have tried to figure out a significance to that but as far as we know there's not one except that that that's the day that it started on right so it's it's nailing it down as a as a historical event but what's the picture that's being drawn by those words on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were open well what that's saying is that The water was not just coming from above in terms of rain.
It was also coming from below out of the earth. So the great fountains of the deep burst forth. I mean, you can just picture the crust of the earth breaking and exploding up as water starts to fill the earth. And the windows of heaven are opened and rain comes down in a way that it had never before. What is that a picture of? Well, it's a picture in reverse of the way God separated those waters in the first place in Genesis chapter 1. Do you remember that?
Do you remember in, I think, the second day, maybe the third? But basically, there's this mass of water, right? And the Bible says that God created an expanse or a space in between the waters so that there were waters above the expanse and there were waters below the expanse. What was that doing? It was creating a space so that ultimately human beings could exist. And you see what's happening when the waters of the great deep burst forth and the windows of heaven are opened?
God is de-creating the world. He's going backwards and de-creating the world. That's why Peter looks back at the flood as an image of the final judgment. And because of that, because this is not just an ancient story that has some points of interest in it, but because it's a picture of what is yet to come and that you and I are going to experience, You need to see and you need to feel in this story the fact that the judgment of God is utterly inescapable.
You're not getting away from it. Look at verse 17 again. The flood continued 40 days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed, the word so mightily there is actually, and the waters prevailed greatly, greatly on the earth so that all the high mountains were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them 15 cubits deep, and all flesh died that moved on the earth.
Birds, livestock, beasts, swarming creatures, and all mankind, everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died. You need to feel the fact that the judgment of God is inescapable. I mean, put yourself there on the day that the rains started. Maybe you're right at the foot of the ark and you've been watching it go up for 120 years. You've been watching this thing be built.
You don't know what it's for. The earth's crust starts to crack and water comes out of it and water starts to fall down from the sky. you see the door of that big box close up and you're out there in the water what do you do what do you do maybe nothing at first maybe you don't think it's a big deal maybe you just think it's a local flood and you can run from it but then it starts to get worse and you run up maybe pound on the door of the ark no let us in let us in maybe you run for high ground maybe you climb up a mountain then you get to the highest place imaginable the highest place that you can get to and the water starts to rise up even above the top of the mountain and you realize there's no hope friends the day of judgment when it comes is going to be like that if you're not in christ the day of judgment is going to be like that you know that's why
the people the ungodly unbelievers in revelation cry out for the mountains to cover them because they have nowhere else to hide. One great preacher from the 19th century, Charles Spurgeon, preached on this text 150 years ago or so, something like that. And when he came to this, you can tell that his mind just, his mind just kind of couldn't handle it. Here's what he said. He said, so what came of it?
The door of hope was shut, and the multitude perished without hope. When I was thinking this over, I fancied that I could preach about it, but I find that I cannot. When I realized the fact that any one of my dear hearers here today should be shut out of heaven, as those were shut out of the ark, I cannot bear it. I want to find a secret place to weep. If an angel should say to me this morning, all of your hearers here shall be saved, except one, and you have to pick out the one who shall be shut out of heaven.
I should run my eye anxiously up and down these lines of pews, and I should take up many an hour. And at last I would cry, no, I can't take the responsibility of marking out the one in this congregation who's to be doomed. I would keep you here, I think, until I died, before I could make that horrible death choice. I would say, Lord, please save every one. And once I identified the marked man, I would cry, spare him too. But, oh, my hearers, will you actually do to yourself what I would not dare to do to you?
Would anyone choose for himself to be lost? Will anyone say that he does not want eternal life and put it away from him? If so, then I must shake the dust off my feet against him. I will not have that responsibility. If you will be damned, you must do it to yourself. I will not be a partaker in the crime. Your blood be on your own head. Go down to the pit if you want, if you deliberately choose to do so. But know this, that Christ today was preached to you and you would not have him.
You were invited to come to him, but you turned your back upon him. You chose for yourself your own destruction. God grant that you may repent of such a choice for Jesus Christ's sake you know there are certain portions and pieces of the Bible that if you really let them in tend to terrify the imagination they're almost too terrible to think about they're almost too terrible to let your imagination run with them and this is one of them if you really take a moment to put yourself outside the ark as the rains begin to fall and the earth's crust begins to break upward as the water bursts out of it.
It's horrifying. But here's what I want you to see. Here's what I want you to see. The fact that God is willing to do that. The fact that he's willing to exact punishment on rebellious sinners. The fact that he is unwilling to ignore the demands of justice makes his invitation to you to come to salvation all the more glorious. When you understand that God was willing to do this, that he's not willing to sweep justice under the rug, it takes away any pretense in your mind that grace and mercy are just something that God does, that he owes it to us, that he couldn't have done otherwise.
It takes any thought of that away. You realize, no, no, no, no, this is a God of justice. This is a God who will do something like this, and so his invitation to me to come to him and be saved is wonderful. All of a sudden, all of a sudden, against the backdrop of what God could have done with us, all of a sudden, free grace becomes astounding.
Christian, God could, you realize, He could have left you in your sin. He could have swept you away into hell. He could have destroyed you and all the sons of God, the angels in heaven, would have applauded Him for His justice. No wonder they long to look into this gospel that we believe. No wonder they long to look into what it's like to receive mercy from God.
What does that mean, they say? Friend, this invitation is for you. If you're not a Christian here this morning, this invitation for salvation is for you. The God who created you, the God who ruled you, rules with justice. And yet he offers you salvation in mercy. Come to Christ. Believe in the one who died in the place of sinners just like you and rose again from the dead and who now reigns above it all and offers all the blessings of eternity.
Come to him, believe in him, and take the blessings of eternity from his hand. It's your only hope to not be shut out. Here's the second thing, the certain promise of saving grace. The certain promise of saving grace against the backdrop of all that destruction, against the backdrop of all that crushing, catastrophic water, the image that you can paint in your mind of that little ark, that little boat bobbing up and down and floating on top of the waves takes on a whole new meaning, doesn't it? It's not just a happy floating zoo. It's salvation for these eight people and these animals. It's just an astounding image of God's grace, and I want you to see some things about it. First of all, look at chapter 7, verse 1. Chapter 7, verse 1. Who is it in chapter 7, verse 1 that speaks to Noah here? Who speaks to Noah? Is it God?
Well, yeah, obviously, but notice what the text calls him. It calls him the Lord, which is hugely significant because this is the first time since the end of chapter 4 that this covenant name of God, that's what this is, Yahweh, right? We just print it in our Bibles as capital L-O-R-D, but it's the covenant name of God, Yahweh. And this is the first time since chapter 4 that he's used this name to refer to God. This is the name that God uses for people he's in covenant with, and all of a sudden it shows up here.
Now, at first, when you first run across that in the text, it seems a little bit shocking, right? Because this whole mess is due to the fact that Adam, way back in Genesis chapter 3, had broken the covenant he had with God, and in the process, he broke that covenant for all of humanity. That covenant is shattered because of Adam's rebellion against God. But on the other hand, it's not so shocking to see the covenant name of God used, Because we're already, in Genesis chapter 7, by this time we're already learning that God is a God of mercy.
And he is a God of grace. And here with Noah, what God is doing is taking a huge step forward in the work of repairing his covenant relationship with human beings. In fact, if you look back up into chapter 6, verse 18, you can see that this has already been talked about. God says to Noah there in 6, 18, I will establish my covenant with you. And you'll come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. Now, if you look at verse 18 there, that word establish is important because that's actually, biblically speaking, that's not the word that you use when you're creating a new covenant.
That's a whole different word. When you're fixing a covenant, though, you use this word establish, right? So really what it means is reestablish. In other words, Adam broke it, Noah, but with you, I'm going to repair this thing. And we're going to talk a lot more about that in chapter 9. But what I want you to see here is that in the moment when God saves Noah, shuts him up in the ark and lets the ark float up as everyone else is being destroyed, in the moment that he saves Noah, he does so in the context of covenant. That's why the word Lord shows up there in 7.1.
It's reminding you that when God saves, he does so in covenant. And friends, that's how he deals with us too. That's how he deals with us too. It's not just a transactional thing that happens when you get saved. No, your salvation actually is a matter of an unbreakable covenant made between God the Father and God the Son. It's an agreement between them to save you. There are all kinds of promises, mutual promises made in this covenant between Father and Son, but essentially it's the Son saying, Father, I will obey you, and the Father saying, and I will reward you for that obedience.
Father, I will die for them, and Son, I will forgive them. It's an unbreakable, eternal set of mutual promises made between Father and Son. And when you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you're clinging on to Jesus and trusting that God is going to keep His promises to His Son. Jesus, your Father has promised you that anybody who has faith in you will be saved from the coming judgment. So I am trusting you and Him to keep your covenant together. And then all of those things that were promised to Jesus become promises to you, and you're swept up and caught up into this eternal covenant.
I mean, you know, we're about to celebrate the Lord's Supper. You know, the Lord's Supper, among other things, is also a covenant meal between us and Jesus. It's a covenant meal between us and the King. It's us saying, as we come to that table, Jesus, I'm uniting with you. My allegiance is with you. My trust is with you. So whatever happens to you happens to me. And I'm trusting that God the Father will keep his covenant with you, the Son, and therefore with me.
Your salvation is not just this tenuous, thin, weak, little agreement between you and God. It's a strong, eternal covenant between Father and Son. as long as he sits at the right hand of the father as the song says no tongue will ever bid you depart his presence it's all Jesus not you and that's how God was dealing with Noah here too in covenant he always does that here's another thing as you look through this story what action of Noah does the story focus on I've already kind of hinted at this but I want you to see it. So look at the sections that talk about this event, 1 through 5, 7 to 9, 13 to 16. What's the focus on? Is the focus of this story on building the ark? No, it's not. It's not on building the ark. In fact, the text never even really looks at all at the moment or the years of Noah building the ark. It's not interested in that. What it's interested in is Noah entering
the ark. Why? Because that's the moment of faith. That's the moment when there's really no turning back. Friends, it's the same for us. The moment of faith when you become, this is a beautiful picture of our faith in Christ. The moment of faith. What faith means when you become a Christian is that you climb up into Jesus and take refuge there. It's not that you build the machinery of salvation it's not that you build something that you're then going to show to god and say hey god look at this this is why you should save me no no salvation is a matter of climbing up into something that that exists into jesus and his work for you and finding rest and comfort in that that's what your salvation is about jesus is the place of safety he's the place of salvation he's the one place in all the cosmos that the fire of judgment will not burn on the last day because it has already burned when he died on the cross.
Last thing, look at that wonderful verse 16. God shut him in. The Lord, the covenant Lord shut him in. I think that's just an incredibly evocative phrase to the imagination, right? It just spawns all kinds of thoughts and ideas. You're like, well, why did God have to shut him in? Why couldn't Noah shut himself in? What's going on with that? Could you literally see the door going up? How did this work?
I mean, technically, if you play around with it, it just means that Noah didn't shut himself in. There was no rope that he pulled. He didn't say, hey, Ham, Shem, Japheth, y'all go out and use some boards and close up the door of the ark and you can use the ladder again. None of that happened. I mean, we don't know why. Maybe the door was too big. Maybe the door was too heavy. There's no particular reason that that would have to be the case, right? But maybe it was. Maybe Noah had been told by God to build a door that was so huge and heavy that part of his faith was realizing that the only way this was going to work was if God shut the door.
I don't know. What I do know is that this is a wonderful picture, again, of what happens to us when we do, in fact, climb up into Christ by faith. the Lord himself shuts us in. He's the one that throws the bolt. He's the one that causes the lock to latch. The covenant Lord who has promised to save us if we will come to Christ keeps his promise. No one, Jesus said, will ever snatch them out of my hand.
Friends, ultimately, that's about who gets credit for salvation. Ultimately, it's about who gets the glory for salvation. Sure, Noah obeyed God. He built the ark. But the story of all that Noah went through in building the ark is conspicuously absent from the story. Because ultimately, Noah gets no glory for his own salvation. If God doesn't shut the door, the waters rush in and he dies anyway.
Now, once the rains start, Noah couldn't do anything but throw himself on God's grace and God's promises. Friends, the exact same thing is true for us. There is great comfort and great glory to God in knowing that our salvation is all in his hands. And that he, by grace, has shut us in. Let's pray. Our Lord, we praise you this morning as a God of great justice and yet at the same time a God of great grace and mercy.
We thank you for saving Noah and his family. We thank you for sending Jesus to live the life that we ought to have lived and die the death that we should have died for our sins. And then to rise again so that if we'll embrace him by faith, if we'll be united to him through covenant, we too will rise to newness of life and to the hope of the resurrection on the last day. Oh, Father, we pray that you would drill into our hearts the joy of knowing that when the fire rages on the day of judgment and consumes the whole cosmos, we will be safe because you have shut us in with Jesus.
We thank you for that, and we pray that you would help us to praise you because of it. And we ask that in Jesus' name, our Savior and our Redeemer. Amen. Thank you.