Scripture text: Genesis 8:1 - 9:17
• Peace in storms comes from knowing who God is and from remembering His character, His nature, His attributes and His Sovereign acts throughout all of history.
Main Idea: God lovingly cares for His people and He is sovereign over all He has made.
1. God is Trustworthy
• God didn’t give us a lot of details about Noah and his experience inside of the ark, God just gave us what we needed to know about the account to learn about Him.
• In the opening verse of our passage, the emphasis is on God – God remembered. God did not forget Noah and God did not forget the animals either. God was in control over everything.
• The word for remembered is the same as the word used for when God visited with Sarah and did as He had promised.
• Noah would have known that God remembered him when the rains and the storms stopped and it would have made all the difference.
• In Genesis 6:18, God promised to make a covenant with Noah and his family and then, in 7:4, God had told Noah that the rain itself would last for 40 days and now, the Lord is with Noah in a very direct way to bring about what He said he would do.
• In the opening verse of this chapter, God demonstrates that He is a covenant partner that can be trusted.
• When God remembers, He always acts – this is not a recollection. From our perspective, God remembers, but His remembrance is just the demonstration of His constant care for His people.
• God was with Noah, even when he didn’t see the Lord – the Lord visited Him to protect and superintend Noah’s circumstances.
• Noah likely wondered day after day when the trial would end: when would the ark land; what would the earth look like; what would be left when it was all over; how would God remake the earth; how long would it continue to rain and where would he end up.
• God didn't share the details. Scripture doesn't indicate God told Noah how long it would take, nor where he would end up.
• There could not be a more vivid picture of trust than floating along in a huge ark full of animals, not knowing the details but completely being dependent on God.
• At times in the midst of deep waters and pouring rain, we may feel like God forgets us but He never does.
• The One who made the waters prevail, prevailed over the waters and blew the waters away and once again, in an echo of the original creation, God makes the waters subside and dry land appears again
• God never forgets us, even through the darkest night and biggest storms of life
• God is always with us, even when we don’t see Him and don’t understand what is happening
• God can be trusted to do what He said He will do.
• Behind every cloud is God’s smiling providence
• We can trust God in even the most difficult circumstances
• God expects us to trust Him and obey Him even when we don’t have all the details
• We can trust God to constantly cares for His people and acts on their behalf
• At times, we must patiently wait while we trust in God
• God is sovereign over all of creation and all circumstances and we can trust He is always working for our good
• When all around us is unstable, God is faithful
• This passage is meant to show that when everything seems most helpless, God is working to save and rescue His people.
2. God gives Unmerited Mercy & Grace
• Noah did not deserve God’s grace – God chose him and God gave him the gift of faith and God counted him as righteous.
• God is the God who in His kindness and mercy restrains the sinfulness of humanity.
• God closed the fountains of the deep; God closed the windows of Heaven and He restrained the rains.
• In His mercy, God restrains suffering and God restrains hardship.
• He did not allow humanity to be completely destroyed and He will not allow His chosen people to be removed from the earth either.
• He will mercifully rescue His chosen ones just as he mercifully rescued Noah and his family
• God is merciful and full of Grace - He does not treat us as our sins deserve
• God lovingly saves and shows unconditional mercy & grace to all who trust in Him, even though we are undeserving.
• He understands that we are weak creatures and that our hearts are evil from our youth. And even though this was the very reason why He brought the flood, God is assuring Noah that though man is still evil from his youth, He will not curse man further.
• In spite of the fact that mankind deserves continued judgment, God chose to delay judging man until He later will punish and judge His own Son on the Cross.
• The only reason we don’t receive the just judgment of God ourselves is that God in His loving mercy and grace poured out His divine wrath on His Son instead of us – or we would have been doomed to destruction.
• Although man is still evil from his youth and still deserving of punishment, the punishable will not be punished because God is merciful and full of grace.
3. God is our Sovereign Provider
• God's re-creation had begun and He blessed Noah with a fruitful family – because God is the source of our life and our very existence
• God moved the ark to just the right spot as soon as the waters began to recede and God sovereignly provided rest for Noah as soon as possible, even thought the waters were still on the earth.
• He was kind to provide a safe resting spot for Noah and his family and the animals in the ark.
• God renewed the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply on the earth.
Psalm 127:3 "Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward"
• God gave man a new and fresh, completely undeserved start. He blessed Noah and his sons and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth just like He had blessed Adam.
• Not only is man to procreate and fill the earth with his own offspring, it is implied that he is to ensure that the animals fill the earth as well.
• Although all of the seasons and the variations in temperature and seed time and harvest were wiped out during the year of the flood waters on the earth, God will lovingly and mercifully provide and care for mankind and the very change of the seasons was given as signs of God’s sovereign care for His creation.
• The earth is not eternal – only God is eternal but while the earth remains, we have in this verse a divine promise of security for mankind until the end of the ages comes and God does away with this earth as we know it.
• Although God has ceased from His work in Creation, the effects of God’s work will not cease until He ends them.
• Animals would be afraid and dread mankind now and this was meant to protect mankind – because without this fear of man, animals would prey upon humans freely.
• God makes a sweeping change in man’s diet and provides the animals as food for man.
• Eating of meat is somewhat of a concession to mankind though, and in order to honor the principle of life – God commanded Noah not to eat the blood of an animal.
• This is so that we remember to honor all life and not abuse any life and we are not to abuse animals either – we are to abstain from eating the blood to remember that life is a precious gift from God.
• We are not to needlessly and wastefully spill even the blood of animals – because they were created by God
• God also provided for man and restrained the violence of mankind, so that the previous violence that dominated the earth and glorified men who committed murder would not continue.
• God provides for man by requiring a reckoning for man’s life.
• Man’s life is not to be taken and his blood is not to be spilled any longer, because we are to honor man as being made in God’s image.
• This new principle was established to protect man and keep evil from reigning as it did prior to the flood.
• God gives the death penalty based on the fact of who man is made to be. Because man bears God's image, murder is serious and the death penalty imposed.
• To take someone’s life in murder is to remove God’s image (in that person) from the earth.
• The death penalty was to also show that the murderer does not accurately represent God’s image Himself
• God gives His blessing and His boundaries to mankind for man’s own good and God’s glory
• God effectively says – I will fulfill my part –now you fulfill your part fully and joyfully.
• They are to be fruitful and multiple God's image in the earth -this is a picture of life teeming on the planet - we were meant to be stewards who reflect God as our provider by encouraging the abundance of life on earth.
4. God is pleased with Faith that results in obedience & worship
• Noah believed God and his faith was counted toward him as righteousness
• In these verses, we see a pattern of Noah’s faith resulting in obedience and then worship. Noah’s faith and righteousness resulted in a life of obedience – Noah trusted in the bare word of God and did what God commanded
• Noah removed the window in the ark because he believed that God had done as He had said He would and the rains were not coming back.
• After Noah was absolutely certain that there would be no more rain, he removes the whole roof of the ark
• Now, Noah was sure that it was safe and he removed the entire roof – the covering of the ark and could see in all directions unobstructed and when he did, he could see that everywhere, he could see the ground and it was dry – that it, it had no water on it.
• Amazingly, we don’t read of Noah hearing from God at all during his whole period of a year in the ark.
• After a few months, Noah is trusting God and trying to wisely discern what the next steps may be
• But even still, he stayed in the ark, until God released him – because it was God Himself who had shut Noah inside the ark.
• Noah demonstrated the kind of faith we are to have that patiently waits on God and believes in God and trusts in God even when we may not see or understand His Word or “feel” subjectively like He is speaking.
• We have the blessing of having His completed Word and it is all that we need for life and godliness.
• We don’t need to be lead by our emotions or our swayed by our circumstances, because we know who God is and we can see that He is trustworthy; that He is merciful and gracious and we can see that He sovereignly provides for all that He has made.
• God was continually looking to protect and care for Noah and to ensure his well-being and then at the right time, He told Noah to go out from the ark.
• Noah only went out of the ark when God commanded him, even though he had tested things and the ground looked dry.
• Just like Noah had immediately went into the ark after God commanded, Noah again immediately heard God’s Word and obeyed Him completely.
• Noah was obedient to the words of the Lord. Noah’s faith in God resulted in obedience to God’s every command
• Obedience did not cause his faith but it was the result of his faith in God.
• And the same is true for us today – our obedience is a sign of our faith and heart-felt dependence on God.
• And then, as it was for Noah, faith in God is seen in our worship of God
• It is significant that the first thing Noah did was to express gratitude to God with a faith-filled sacrifice from what he had.
• Noah worshipped God for His salvation before he did anything else
• Noah built an altar not to a distant God but to his Heavenly Father, who had personally and lovingly cared for Noah.
• Noah’s sacrifice would have required trust in God's provision, since the animals were all that Noah had to rely and depend upon for food for he and his family for future generations.
• This was a picture of Noah giving heartfelt thanks to God from his meager possessions and expressing his deep and sincere gratitude and trust in God, his Divine Savior, for the future.
• And this is what worship is meant to be for us as well – not to atone or earn God’s favor but to give God thanks and offer our very best to Him in sincere gratitude and trust in God, Our Savior, for the future.
• God is not a man and He didn’t eat Noah’s sacrifice but He “smelled” what it meant and it was precious to Him.
• God was pleased with Noah’s expression of gratitude because He saw Noah’s intent as he gave his very best and God was moved to express to Noah His intent as well.
• When we offer worship to God, God looks at the intent of our hearts as well.
• Whether we sacrifice today by denying ourselves something, or by sacrificially serving someone else, or by practicing hospitality, or being a generous giver in church, or whatever the sacrifice is – it is pleasing to God if it flows from a heart to worship - to honor and show our gratitude to God.
• God is pleased with our heart-felt worship
5. God is Committed to His Covenants
• It is very clear that God is committed to remembering and acting on His covenant because this aspect is mentioned eight times in these verses.
• Here God is the initiator of the first covenant with mankind and God is the One who establishes it
• God does not require man to agree, to act or to even acknowledge His covenant
• This is a covenant of unconditional mercy from the God of all mercy and grace.
• In effect, God declares to Noah “you will be fruitful and multiply in security, and I – I shall protect your lives.” -Umberto Cassuto
• God cares about his creation so much that He even ensures that the animal kingdom is not punished for the sins of mankind in the same way as before.
• God makes a covenant and promises that He will never again cut off flesh by a flood and He will never destroy the earth with a flood.
• God gave us an everlasting sign and symbol to remind us that he is a covenant-making, covenant-keeping God who is faithful to all of His promises.
• God gave His rainbow as a sign of the covenant between Him and the whole earth – between Yahweh, the personal God and His creation.
“Stretched between heaven and earth, it is a bond of peace between both, and, spanning the horizon, it points to the all-embracing universality of the Divine mercy” – F. Delitzsch, A New Commentary on Genesis
• Every time we see a rainbow, it is meant to remind us that God is a merciful God, that He is the God who provides for us and cares for us. He will keep and sustain our lives.
• God makes promises to us based on His own goodness, not on our earning
• God is a faithful God who keeps His promises for all generations
“they will always see the sign, and this constant observation will be a sign and token of the promise of God, who remembers the covenant.” – Umberto Cassuto
• The Israelites looked back at the covenant of Noah and it prepared them to trust in God’s covenant that he made with them through Moses.
• But God’s people still broke their covenant with God, even after seeing all of His faithfulness – both to Noah and their ancestors and to them as well.
• In the end, they couldn’t keep their end of the covenant that came through Moses, and neither can we.
• We cannot earn favor with God. We cannot be righteous on our own
• Apart from God, our condition is helpless and we would be destined to drown in our own sins
• As sinners, we needed to be rescued from this body of death and to be saved from the waters of death that would seek to overwhelm us.
• The covenant that God made with Noah wasn’t good enough to save mankind, as merciful as it was. It was not sufficient to atone for mans sins.
• As gracious and undeserved as God’s promises were, it still pointed to the fact that sin was left unpunished.
• But we have been given a new and better covenant – one that has nothing to do with our merit.
John 3:16-17 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Now, “Christ, the greater Noah, saves His people from the waters of death by His faithful obedience and atoning sacrifice. Praise be to His name” – R. Kent Hughes
Potential Application Questions:
1. How does this account of Noah’s deliverance help you see the character & nature of God better?
2. How does knowing that God never forgets His people and that He can always be trusted help build your own faith in God?
3. When are you tempted to doubt God remembers you? (or think that He doesn’t have your best interests at heart?)
4. How is God’s unmerited mercy seen in His promises to man, even while He says that “the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth”?
5. How can God’s extreme generosity be seen in this passage? (hint: food, seasons, children, protection, etc.)
6. How has God sovereignly provided for you in the past, during the midst of your own personal “storms” in life?
7. How has your own faith been built in meditating on this scripture? How does this increase our desire to follow God and worship Him more?
8. What is the effect on your heart of seeing God as a faithful God who keeps His promises for all generations?
9. How does this scripture help us trust God more?
10. What should our own response to His provision & faithfulness be?
