Genesis 8:1–19

0:01 Well, I don't know about you, but this past Tuesday was, for me, a glorious day. It was so glorious because something finally happened that I've been waiting on for probably a little bit over a year. I had a pretty busy day on Tuesday. We have service review and staff meeting here at the church, then I had a couple of other meetings. So it was fairly late in the evening when I got home and finally, you know, could start paying attention to things.

0:32 And so, you know, I got home and finally settled in and checked my phone and saw to my great delight that I had a notification from AT&T that I am eligible for a new phone. I'm telling you, it was glorious. When's the last time you got one of those notifications? It's cool, isn't it? Because you know that in the next few days, you're going to get to strut into that AT&T store and take your busted, cracked, scratched old phone and slam it on the table and say, give me a new one.

1:09 And you go through the whole three-hour process of getting a new phone. And finally, you walk out, and you unbox the phone, and you take off the beautiful packaging, and you look down at it, and it's untouched newness. there are no fingerprints, there are no scratches, there's nothing but just the sheer beauty of a new phone. And it's not just a phone, is it? It's not just that you've gotten a new phone. When you get a new phone, you can feel it deep down in your soul. You are a new person. And that phone changes everything, doesn't it? You're like, I'm going to be a better person because I have this one. I'm going to download an app that has a to-do list on it. I'm going to start using the calendar.

1:54 I'm going to communicate better with people. I'm going to be a new person because I've got a new phone. That's how it is, isn't it? I mean, it's silly, but it really does kind of feel like that. And my goodness, if you ever get a new car, it's even better. Man, I'm going to be like Jesus now because I've got a new car. We love newness. We human beings love newness. If you think about it, the whole history of the human race could actually be talked about as a search, a quest for newness.

2:29 We want our societies to be made new. We want our bodies to be made new. We want our minds to be made new. Everything is a search for a new beginning. And that's what we're going to be talking about today as we continue this study that we've been in for the last few weeks. So the first few chapters of the very first book of the Bible, Genesis. So let me invite you to take a Bible. If you have one, turn over to Genesis chapter 8. We're going to be looking at most of that chapter today. If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles in front of you, you will find Genesis 8 on page 6 there.

3:02 If you're not using a Bible like this one, it's still going to be very near the front of your Bible. So find the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Flip over until you see the big number 8 on the page. That's what we call chapters. The chapters of the Bible are not inspired like the rest of it. So they weren't done by God. They were done by a monk in like the 11th century. And so what you're going to hear over and over again is me saying things like, look at chapter 8 or look back up into chapter 7. And then if you look, if you're just not familiar with the Bible, if you look down inside one of those chapters, like chapter 8 there, you'll see numbers.

3:38 Some of those numbers, I think there's one in chapter 8, maybe two, that are footnotes. And you'll have to distinguish those. But if you look down in there, you're going to see little numbers. They're superscripted numbers. And those are what we call verses. It doesn't have anything to do with music. It's just a way that Christians came up with a long, long time ago to sort of do this kind of thing. So I'm going to say things like, look down at verse 6, and you're going to know to look in chapter 8, because that's where we are, and then find the little number 6, and you'll be able to tell what I'm talking about. Let me give you a kind of running start at Genesis chapter 8.

4:11 It's the story of the primeval age, the very first age of human existence. And it tells the story of the first few generations of the human race. These chapters of the Bible, we're going to be looking at them up until Christmas through chapter 11. These chapters of the Bible are really important to understand well because all of the major themes of the rest of the Bible storyline all the way through Revelation. So the themes of sin and redemption and sacrifice and atonement and grace and mercy and salvation. all of those themes launch from right here, from these first 11 chapters of the first book of the Bible.

4:47 So for the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at the story of Noah and the great flood, which probably you are familiar with, at least to some level. And it's a story of how God floods the world after sin takes total control of human beings and drives them to a level of wickedness that demands nothing less than wiping humanity off the face of the earth. Now, the main thing that this story is teaching us is that sin is not a small problem. It's not just in one or two people or even one or two billion people.

5:20 Sin is pervasive in the human race, and it is deep in the human heart. So when Adam rebelled against God back in chapter 3 about eating this fruit that God commanded him not to eat, sin infected not just his heart, but it infected all of his descendants' hearts too. It infected deeply the human race. And now, by the time you get to chapter 6, 7, 8, there's nothing left. Sin has gotten so bad and so deep in the human heart that there's nothing left but to start completely over.

5:52 With the one most righteous man on the planet, this guy named Noah. It's almost as if the story is teaching you, look, even if God were to wipe out the entire human race again, And keep only the most righteous person on the planet, whoever that is. It's probably Alisson Arruda who just led the service. Start over with the most righteous man. There you go. Amen. On the planet. Sin would still be a problem.

6:25 Sin's claws would still go into the human heart deeply. And as the generations carried on, sin's wickedness would rise again. Well, that's what God's been doing over the last couple of chapters. We've been looking at it for two weeks. In chapter 6, we saw God's grace to Noah, his command to him to build an ark, this great ship that would float on top of this destroying flood and save Noah from the sentence of death that every other human being was going to have executed against him. Last week in chapter 7, we saw that judgment finally executed, a great flood that covered the entire planet and wiped out all life.

7:00 The great fountains of the deep burst forth, and the windows of heaven were open and the waters that had been separated in creation crashed back together again and destroyed everything, animal, plant, human, all of it, wiped out as God essentially decreated and reset the world. Well, at the end of chapter 7, we were left with this chilling, deadly statement, only Noah was left. And the image that we had was the ark still being tossed on the tops of the waves.

7:32 Well, with the beginning of chapter 8, though, the flow of the story and the flow of the water reverses. The waters begin to recede, the ark comes to rest, and the mountains of a region called Ararat and judgment starts finally to give way to life. And maybe more clearly, more brilliantly than we've seen in the entire story so far, we get a glimpse, more than a glimpse, in fact, of God's life-saving grace. Let's look at chapter 8, pick up the story in verse 1. But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark.

8:07 And God made a wind blow over the earth and the waters subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed. And the rain from the heavens was restrained and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated. And in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the 10th month. In the 10th month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. At the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven.

8:39 It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out from the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. And then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.

9:16 In the 601st 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. in the second month on the 27th day of the month the earth had dried out and then God said to Noah go out from the ark you and your wife and your sons and your son's wives with you bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth so Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his son's wives with him every beast every creeping thing and every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark.

10:00 Now, there's nothing too difficult about this text. It's a pretty straightforward story. There are no, you know, exegetical turns. There are no, you know, stumbling blocks exegetically or anything like that. You can probably see three paragraphs there in your Bible, which is a pretty good division of the story. So in the first paragraph, verses one to five, you've got the receding of the waters. In the second paragraph, 6 through 12, you've got the story of these birds that Noah sends out to try to figure out what's going on with the waters. Like, is there any dry land or is there not? And in the third paragraph, 13 to 19, you've got Noah's disembarkation from the ark onto this newly dry land. Now, obviously, there's a lot of interesting detail here, as there has been throughout the, well, throughout all the chapters of Genesis, I would say. And it makes for a great story. But as is always the case with the Bible, the point that the author is trying to get across to us is not so much the details as it is that he's trying to get us to see and learn something

11:01 about our relationship with God. So who he is and what he requires of us, what that means for us and for our lives. And here in chapter 8, we get a picture of God's Gracious granting of newness to humanity. In the wake of the cataclysm of Adam's sin, in the wake of sin's claws getting deep into the heart of human beings, here God does something unexpected. Instead of completely wiping this rebellious human race off the face of the earth as they deserved, He shows them grace and gives them a new beginning.

11:38 Here's the main idea. It's fairly simple. God remembers, and we begin again. God remembers, and because of that, we begin again. I want to walk through this story with you pretty much looking at each of those three main paragraphs. So it's going to be not quite as neat as all that. But there are going to be three points to the sermon. Number one, God remembers. Number two, Noah waits. And number three, the world begins again. So those three points, God remembers, Noah waits, and the world begins again.

12:14 Above all, you probably already can see this, Genesis chapter 8 is the story of a new beginning. The world is made new, Noah steps out of the ark, shielding his eyes from the light of the sun that he probably hasn't seen very much for the past year. After all the cataclysm, all the disaster, all the judgment, everything is starting over again. And I hope that as we study this passage and look at the story and think about it, I hope that you will feel some of that hope and newness here. And I hope you'll see that God offers you that hope and newness even right now, this morning, today, in and through Jesus Christ and what he did for you on the cross and in his resurrection.

12:55 So let's start looking at it. Number one, point number one, God remembers. God remembers. At the end of chapter 7, if you just kind of let your eyes roll back up through chapter 7, the situation was really dire, wasn't it? I mean, we were in a bad spot at the end of chapter 7. Noah, even though he was in the ark, was in a bad spot. The waters of the flood had covered the whole earth, and the ark with Noah and his family inside was lifted up off the ground where it had been built and floated on top of the waters. Now, you've got to get a picture of how utterly and completely terrifying this would have been if you were in the ark with Noah.

13:31 So from the time the rain started falling to the time that the ark finally came to rest on the ground again was, if you add it all up and you look at the Jewish calendars and all the rest of it, it was exactly 365 days. And for most of that time, day after day, night after night, 365 of them, there was nothing for Noah to do except stare out into the nothingness. I don't know if you've ever been out at sea on a ship, maybe in the dead of night when you can't see any land.

14:09 It's just horizon and water as far as the eye can see. I don't know if you've ever been there, but if you let yourself sit in that moment, it's a terrifying thought. I remember when I was in college reading, I got sort of obsessed with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Just read about it, read about it, read about it, story after story. Every book that I could find, I watched it, the movie, I watched it, everything. And the thing that just gripped me as I watched that was the darkness and the blackness of the night and the water when the ship finally sank.

14:42 And there was nothing there. You were either in the water or you were in a lifeboat, but basically the thing, this gigantic ship that was keeping you alive was just suddenly not there. There's nothing but blackness. That's what Noah would have seen. utter nothingness, the whole earth had been flung back to the state basically that existed in Genesis chapter 1 verse 2. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. There's no doubt in my mind as I put myself in Noah's shoes, as I put myself in his bedroom on the ark, there must have been times. As Noah looked up at those iron gray clouds, and down in the inky blackness of this world-swallowing ocean, there must have been times when he thought he was going to die in that box.

15:34 When he thought, God has put me up to this, and now we're floating on the waters, and there's no land anywhere on the earth. I'm going to die in here. God has forgotten me for 365 days. But then comes chapter 8, verse 1. But God remembered Noah. God remembered Noah. Jews and Christians have noticed throughout the centuries that the story of the flood, the whole thing, from chapter 6 through chapter 9, essentially, in the telling of the story, forms a giant chiasm.

16:15 Now, most of you will be somewhat familiar with chiasms because I kind of point them out to you when they're important. this one is really important and if you're not familiar with the chiasm it's basically a literary structure where you you you get sort of half the shape of an x with with the literary structure so you have like you know something talked about up here at the beginning and then the very same theme will be talked about in a different way at the end so it has a structure of sort of a a b b c c d d you know e e and then at the center will be you know the big theme and in a chiasm what stands at the center is usually the thing that is the most important. That's what the author is wanting to put your attention on. Most chiasms in the Bible only do something like A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A.

16:59 They're fairly short. They might have seven or eight points. This chiasm that's been identified from chapter 6 through chapter 9, the story of the flood, has like 30-something parts to it. It's enormous, and it works just perfectly. And you know what's at the very center of it? I mean, when you go like, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, H, A, K, L, M, O, P, Q, R, S, D, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. Do you know what the Z is? But God remembered Noah. That's the point. That's what Moses is wanting you to see when he writes the story that the most important thing that has happened in this whole thing is that God remembered Noah.

17:40 Now, you've got to be a little careful with this because this doesn't mean that God remembered Noah in the sense that he had forgotten him beforehand. Chapter 8, verse 1 is not God going, oh, oh, Noah, whoa. You know, that's not what's going on. No, the word's got a lot deeper meaning than that. So, to show you that meaning, let me read you a few more verses where this same word, remembered, shows up in the Old Testament. All right, I got four of them that I'm going to read to you, and I want you to pay attention and see if you can tell what all of these verses have in common.

18:12 You ready? Exodus chapter 2, verse 24. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. Exodus chapter 6, verse 5. Moreover, I have heard, God said, the groaning of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. Genesis 19, 29. So it was that when God destroyed the cities of the valley, Sodom and Gomorrah, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.

18:51 Okay? Leviticus chapter 26. But if the people of Israel will confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham and I will remember the land. What do you notice about all of these uses of the word remembered? What are they connected to? It's not just God ceasing to forget, is it? It's God remembering his covenant. When God remembers, it doesn't just mean that he calls somebody to mind that had left his mind beforehand.

19:29 It means that he calls to mind his covenant with that person and then he acts for their salvation. He remembers his covenant with the people of Israel and he acts for their salvation. He remembers his covenant with Abraham and acts for Lot's salvation. He hears the groaning of his people and he remembers his covenant and he acts for their salvation. And here, he remembers his covenant with Noah and acts for his salvation.

20:01 You remember, last week we looked at this. God put himself in covenant in chapter 7, chapter 6, to save Noah and his family. In other words, what God did when he put himself in covenant is that he locked himself in relationship with Noah. And here, what's going on in chapter 8 is that he calls that covenant to mind. He thinks about, I am in covenant with Noah, and therefore I'm going to act on that covenant to save him. That's what stands at the center of the story of the great flood. God remembers Noah. So what does that mean for us? What does that mean for us? Well, for one thing, just notice and think about the fact that God's remembering his covenant with his people always happens at their moment of greatest need.

20:44 That's when you see it again and again and again in the stories of the Old Testament. When God remembers his covenant and acts to save someone, it's because they are at their moment of greatest need. It's when they're groaning in slavery or in danger of destruction or dying in their sins. That's when God remembers and that's when he acts. Friend, if you're a Christian, then that's true for you too. There are going to be times in this life when you feel like God has forgotten you. When you feel like God has lost control. There are going to be times when the waters of your own sin have risen up to your nostrils and you think it's over.

21:21 Friend, if you're in one of those times, do you know what you need to do? You know what you need to do if you're in one of those times when you feel like God's forgotten you, when you feel like you're at the end of your rope, you need to call out to God. Whether it's in fear or desperation, whether it's in despair or whether it's with the waters of sin risen up to your neck, You need to call out to God and trust Him to remember the covenant that He has made with Jesus Christ to save you. You remember what we said last week. You remember what we talked about.

21:51 If you've embraced Jesus, if you've put your faith in Him, then God the Father has locked Himself in covenant with God the Son to save you. And it's an unbreakable covenant. He will remember you. He will remember his covenant with his son and therefore with you. It may not happen exactly when and how you want it to happen. And Noah had to wait another five months before it was even clear to him that God had remembered him.

22:27 And in chapter 8 verse 1 says God remembered Noah, but Noah didn't know that yet. He had to wait five more months before he knew it. The people of Israel had to groan in slavery for 400 years. before God acted to save them. But see, that's the thing about covenant. Even when you can't see what's happening, you can have a rock-solid confidence that God will never, He will never, ever, ever break His covenant with His Son, and therefore He will never break His covenant with you.

23:01 Because your covenant with God, your salvation is not dependent on your wishy-washy relationship with God. If you have a week where you don't hit a single quiet time for the entire week, it's not that there's a bunch of static that comes into the covenant between you and God because you've messed it up. Your salvation, your covenant with God is rock solid, secured by the obedience of Jesus Christ in your place. Never, ever forget that. Here's another thing about covenants.

23:33 It's not just that God remembers us in covenant. It is also that we are called to remember God. Deuteronomy 8, verse 18. This is one of the main things that is said to the people of Israel when they go into covenant with God because he remembers them and rescues them from slavery. Deuteronomy 8, verse 18. You shall remember the Lord your God. You shall remember the Lord your God. That's what Noah does. It's not part of our text.

24:04 We'll talk about it next week in more detail. But look what Noah does. As soon as he comes out of the ark, in verse 20, he sets foot on dry ground. And then what happens in verse 20? Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Noah remembered God. And that's one of the super hard things, isn't it, about the Christian life. And it's ironic because it sounds like such a simple thing. Remember the Lord your God.

24:36 Okay, I can remember. That's not that hard. and then you get into class and you get into work and you get into parenting and kids and errands and frustrations and traffic and politics and entertainment and X and all the rest and it's hard even just to call into mind it seems so simple and yet it is so so difficult and yet remembering the Lord your God is one of the main obligations of covenant as he has remembered you so you are to remember him.

25:11 Okay, so what strategies do you have in place in your life to do that on a regular basis, to call to mind the Lord's kindness to you, to remember the Lord your God? You know, some people have had a habit of doing a quiet time every day, set aside a little time to pray and to read the Bible. It's a good thing to do. Maybe you need to put that kind of thing in your life. Maybe it's music as you're driving. Maybe it's something when you hit a red light, You spend a few moments praying. We try to, here at Third Avenue, give you lots of excuses, so to speak, to pray throughout your week.

25:44 We send out that prayer email after every evening service. It's got everything we prayed about in the evening service. We offer an evening service where we come together to remember the Lord and pray. I know some of you have blocked it, but I have taken to using the unofficial, Third Avenue unofficial email list as a prompt for prayer. I'm very sorry. I don't always read all of your emails. I don't care if you have half a bag of rice to give people. Someone will take it. I don't want it. But I have taken to kind of using those emails as they come as a prompt for prayer, right?

26:18 So whatever you're asking about, I'll just kind of see your name and I'll say a quick prayer for you. We give you lots of excuses and opportunities to pray here at Third Avenue. Implement some of those things. Some of the most important things that you can put into your life. And I trust that most of you, you're here this morning, and so you've probably done this. But it would be the weekly rhythm of coming to church, right? Then Christians have met on the Lord's Day for centuries for exactly this reason. Because it creates a weekly rhythm in our lives.

26:49 And here at 3rd Avenue, we meet twice a Lord's Day. Once in the morning, this service right here, and once in the evening. And it would be a good thing for you to implement that rhythm in your life. So that you're coming here weekly, and you're taking the Lord's Supper every other week. And there are rhythms to your life. When we take the Lord's Supper, you know what we're doing, right? And Jesus says, when you eat this bread and drink this cup, do so in remembrance of me. Christian, the Lord's Supper needs to be a regular rhythmic part of your life.

27:23 So that you are forced to remember the Lord your God who saved you. I've told you this before, but especially those of you, I mean, it's true for everybody, but especially if, say, you're at the beginning of your life, maybe the beginning of your married life, maybe you've got new kids, something like that, babies. You need to start putting bricks in the stream of your life that are immovable no matter what. You know what I mean by that? You put a brick in a stream, and what happens?

27:53 The water from the stream has to move around the brick. I am really concerned that a huge portion of evangelicals, especially young families, make the bricks in their lives things like kids' soccer games. And everything in their life swirls around the kids' soccer games or gymnastics or whatever it is. You know what the bricks in your life need to be? The things that are basically immovable? It needs to be gathering with your church family on the Lord's Day.

28:26 Put that brick in your life and let the waters of your life swirl around that, not the other way around. Remember the Lord your God. Here's the kicker. Sometimes that practice of remembering the Lord your God as you wait on his salvation goes on for a very long time. That's point number two. God remembers, number two, Noah waits.

29:03 Noah waits. So from verses 2 to 14, you've got the story of the floodwaters sort of slowly receding and of Noah waiting on the ground to dry enough to start a new life out on this, you know, newly judged, newly, you know, restored earth. And throughout this passage, there are several dates given. You probably noticed that as I read it. They'll say in the 600th year of Noah's life on the such and such day of the such and such month. There are lots of dates given. And Christians have tried for centuries. Jews have tried for even longer to try to find some significance to those dates. But as hard as we've tried, they literally just seem to be dates.

29:38 It's not like Noah comes out of the ark on the same day that Jesus died on the cross or, you know, something like that. There's just nothing that we can see. So they don't really seem to be symbolic of anything. They just seem to be saying it really did happen and we kept good records of it. That's what it seems to be doing. I mean, if you think about it, if you're telling a fairy tale or if you're telling a legend, right, you say things like, once upon a time or in a galaxy a long time ago. Wait, I got to get that right. Y'all crushed me.

30:09 A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. You say stuff like that. You don't start your telling of, you know, I don't know, the three pigs. You don't say on January 17th, 1976, Mary talked to the three pigs. You don't, I've forgotten even what that story is, but you know what I'm saying. If it's a legend, you don't put a date on it because then people start going, now what? Because that sounds like history, not legend, right?

30:40 And yet that's what happens here. That's how the flood is dated. The rains started. Now, I'm going to use our months to tell you about this because it's not exactly accurate to use our months. The Jewish months kind of overlap ours, but it's going to give you a better sense of time if I say, you know, January to October than if I said Nisan to Tishrei, right? You're just not going to understand that. So I'm going to use our months, even though it's not strictly accurate. The rain started on February 17th of the 600th year of Noah's life.

31:14 They stopped on March the 27th. On July 17th, the ark came to rest in the mountains in this region of Ararat that's over in eastern Turkey. And then on February 27th, like half a year later, of the 601st year of Noah's life, Noah came out of the ark. So for all that time, just 365 days if you count it all up. For 365 days, what did Noah do? on that ark. He had a year of it. All water, all dark clouds. What did he do? Well, I mean, if you think about it, presumably he had to do a lot, right? There were animals to feed, and there were stalls to muck, and there was water to sanitize, and all the rest. He had to do all of it.

32:03 It was his home for a year. But most of all, if you look at the story, the story ignores all of that. It doesn't give you any detail at all about what Noah did on the ark. The one thing it said that he did, most of all, is that he waited. He just waited. He waited for God to remember him and to keep his promise to save him. That's exactly the point of the story of the raven and the dove in verses 6 through 12. Look at that. And a couple of different times in the story, in that paragraph, in fact, it's just specifically said that Noah waited. He waited a certain amount of time. And And even beyond that, you can't really see this in your English versions of the Bible.

32:43 But in the original Hebrew, there's actually a play on words that kind of heightens this sense of waiting. So think back to chapter 5. Do you remember what Noah's name means? What Noach means? It means rest. Because Noah's father, Lamech, thought that it was going to be Noah who was finally going to give humanity rest or relief from the curse that Adam's sin had brought on him. So what's interesting is that several times through this passage, that idea of rest shows up as the thing everyone is hoping for and needing.

33:20 So in verse 4, for instance, the ark comes to rest. It comes to Noah in the mountains of Ararat. In verse 9, that word place that the dove can't find is actually manoach. It's a resting place. She can't find a resting place. It's what everybody's looking for. It's what everybody's hoping for, a place to rest. That's what everybody wants. But Noah has to wait for it.

33:51 I mean, look how long he waits on the Lord in this story. If you look at verse 4, the ark came to rest, so to speak, On July 17th, that's when it finally goes, right, the waters have gone down enough and it comes to rest somewhere in the mountains of the region of Ararat. And then nothing happens. Nothing happens for two and a half more months until October the 1st. And even then, all that happens on October the 1st is that Noah can see the tops of the mountains.

34:21 And then you know what happens? Nothing. Nothing happens. What does he do at that point? He waits some more. Forty more days he waits. And then he sends this raven out and nothing happens. So he waits again. He sends out the dove. And then he waits again. And then he sends the dove again. And he finally, finally gets some confirmation in verse 11 that some things are finally alive again. Right? This branch or leaf of an olive tree says the earth is habitable again.

34:54 He gets the olive branch, and then look what he does in verse 12. As soon as he's got confirmation that the earth is habitable, what does he do? Verse 12, he waits again. And then finally, when the dove doesn't come back, in verse 13 on January 1st, when he looks out and sees that the earth is pretty much dry, what does he finally do in verse 14? Nothing. He waits again until February 27th. more months when God finally tells him now go out from the ark somebody once said that in all those months of waiting on the water and then waiting some more once the ark settled on dry land Noah made a best friend of of patience. I think that's true. He made a best friend of patience and that's something you and I

35:58 have to do as Christians too. Listen to me when I say this. Listen carefully. God doesn't always keep his promises as quickly as we would like him to. He doesn't always keep his promises as quickly as we would like him to. He always keeps them. Always. If God makes a promise, he's going to keep it. But it's not always on our time frame.

36:29 And that's one of the great lessons that every Christian has to learn. I mean, listen to how Peter talked about it. He says, don't overlook this fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day. But the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises. Some count slowness. He's patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

37:06 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness? Waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Christianity is about waiting.

37:38 Remember what the martyrs under the altar in Revelation are told. When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. And they cried out with a loud voice, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? And then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer. Friend, what are you waiting on?

38:11 Are you waiting on some deliverance from God, maybe? Maybe relief from some pain you're experiencing? Maybe you're just waiting on the final trumpet when God will finally put an end to this mess of a world that we live in. Let me tell you what you have to do. Let me tell you what Noah would tell you that you have to do. Make a best friend of patience. Make a best friend of patience. Remember that God never, ever, ever fails to keep His promises. But He is also never, ever, ever hurried about it.

38:44 Which, when you think about it, is a really kind of heart-settling thing all in itself, isn't it? I mean, isn't it great to know that the God that we worship, the God that we trust with our lives, is never hurried? He's never in a panic. He's never rushing out the door like we are. Now, our God sits in serene sovereignty above the cosmos. And he will bring his purposes to pass in every detail the moment he is ready to bring them to pass.

39:20 So take a breath. Take a breath. Do what Christians have done for centuries and what God's people have done for millennia. Wait. It's one of the surest signs, one of the surest signs of a true and living faith that you are able to keep trusting God even when it looks like he's doing nothing. So God remembers, Noah waits, and the world begins again. Point number three, the world begins again.

39:51 In verse 14, it finally happens. On February 27th in the 601st year of Noah's life, the earth is dry enough to support life again and God commands Noah to go out of the ark. And so they do. Him, his wife, his sons, and their wives, birds and animals and creeping things and everything that's got the breath of life in it. They all swarm out of the ark and they start the world over again. You see that phrase? Look at verse 17 when this happens. You see that phrase at the end of verse 17? Be fruitful and multiply on the earth. What does that remind you of?

40:24 Well, if you've been here for this whole series, you recognize that it's the same thing God said to his creatures after he created them back in Genesis 1. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. It's a callback to Genesis 1. In fact, in fact, there's been something going on through this whole chapter 8 that I haven't shown you yet, but we've kind of, we've kind of sailed over it like the ark over the waves. It's been there the whole time, right? But I haven't showed it to you. You remember last week when we said that the language of the flood, the fountains of the great deep bursting forth in the windows of heaven, opening the waters coming together in a crash from both the top and the bottom.

41:02 Remember when we said that all of that language spoke of God's de-creation of the world? Well, here in chapter 8, the language of this chapter, as the clouds break and the waters recede and the dry ground reappears, the language of this chapter, if you look at it really carefully, is actually retracing the language of the seven days of creation. Now, I'm not going to go into too much detail about it, but I'll show you a couple places. You can see this most clearly in verse one. You see there in verse one, God remembered Noah and all the beasts of the, beasts and livestock that were with him in the ark. And look at that, look at that sentence there. God made a wind blow over the earth and the waters subsided. That word wind right there is the same word as spirit back in Genesis 1-2. So you see the image that's being painted here? In Genesis 1 verse 2, the Spirit of God hovers over the face of these chaotic waters. And what Moses says as he tells

42:04 this story is here, as the waters start to recede, a wind of God blows over the face of the chaotic waters. It's recapitulating, Genesis chapter 1. And it all culminates here at the end with this recap of day six. I mean, look at 15. Go out from the ark, you, your wife, your son's, your son's wives, bring it, bring it. And then it starts naming all these things, right? All flesh, birds, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply. And then it does it again in verse 19. Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark. It's like the gates of a zoo have been flung open, right? There's birds flying and giraffes coming out of the ark. You finally get that happy picture of noah's ark here the animals are swarming in exactly the same way that they swarm on day five and six of creation and then ultimately this whole recapitulation comes to a head in chapter nine when god said reaffirms again that humans are created in his image and every day is represented in order so you see what's happening here god is recreating

43:11 the earth he's giving humanity a brand new start i mean that speaks to something deep in our souls doesn't it it speaks to a desire deep down in our souls every single one of us for a new start a new beginning a chance to wipe the slate clean and just start over when you think about it that's that's the story that that's the longing in fact of the whole story of the bible how do we start over? How do we get back to Eden? How do we get past that flaming sword that's flashing to and fro to keep us from the tree of life? How do we get back? How can we be made new again?

43:55 I mean, friend, do you feel that in your own life? Wouldn't it be good just to be able to start over? To have all your failures, all your shortcomings, your sin, your evil, the way you've treated people in your life, wouldn't it be amazing to just have it all wiped out, just sunk into a worldwide ocean forever, never to be seen again, so you could just begin again. Listen to me.

44:29 That is exactly what Jesus Christ offers you. Paul, 2 Corinthians 5, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, and the new has begun. You know what's even better about it? The problem here, the problem with Noah, and we're going to see it in chapter 9, the problem is that Noah has a clean slate.

45:07 But it's his slate. He's going to mess it up again. You know what's so glorious about the gospel of Jesus Christ? It's that God doesn't give you a new slate to mess up again. He gives you Jesus' slate. You can start over. You're going to be a new person. If you come to Christ, put your faith in him, repent of your sins, bow your knee and say, Jesus, I can't save myself.

45:39 And if you were to give me a new slate, I would mess it up again. What I need is your slate. I need you to live for me. I need you to die for me. I need you to rise for me. I need you to stand for me. You'll do that. Your world will begin again. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the great Savior and the great Redeemer that the world longed for for millennia. Lord Jesus, we pray that you would cause all of us to long for the newness that you can give to us.

46:14 Cause us to long for newness of life and newness of spirit. And cause us to long for the new heavens and the new earth. Lord God, we pray that you would not let our hearts be taken over by desires for the old things of this world. The things that are passing away. But make us a people who long for the new things that will never pass away. We pray all of this in Jesus' name and always to his honor and glory. Amen.