Please forgive the grammer here they are the raw notes from my talk on Sunday, Charlie.
There are lots of avenues we can go down with Genesis: You can trying to figure out where the events fit in history and struggle with the things that are just hard to believe. But today I want to put that aside and look at what this story of Noah teaches us about the nature of God and the nature of his love for us.
Its a big story running to several chapters so I’m going to just read some sections of it
5 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
9 This is the account of Noah.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress [c] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.
he LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven [a] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."
5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.
6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth
For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. [b] , [c] 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.
5 Then God said to Noah, 16 "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."
18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though [a] every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
22 "As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease."
Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
4 "But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
6 "Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man.
7 As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it."
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."
12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."
17 So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth."
First glances – A judging God
At first glance the story of Noah is one where we see this sort of awful God standing from a great height and wiping out humanity. A sort of Elizabeth I kind of sovereign – off with their heads. Wipe out the people. For that reason its often one of the passages that people point to in the old testament when they say ‘this book is really just reflecting the violent God-myths of a primitive people. The God painted here is a violent, feckless, brutal ruler.
But I believe the closer you look at the passage the more you see actually the picture of a very intimate God.
But a special kind of Judge
This is I think a picture of God as both sovereign and intimate father. As both judge and caring creator.
Chapter 6 opens with the extraordinarily poignant words ‘God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth’.
The last time we heard that phrase was a few chapters earlier when God had finished creating the world and it says he looked ‘and saw that it was good’. Now he looks and sees violence all around him.
He looks and while he still detects the beauty no doubt of nature, while he can still separate the honest men from the rest he is confronted with a picture which is dreadfully depressing.
I find it impossible to not share that view of the world much of the time. I know there are those people who struggle with the idea of God as judge, the notion of a God who wants to rid the world of evil. I struggle with the alternative. I struggle with any faith or belief system which says. ‘There’s a good God out there’ but somehow he can tolerate all of these dreadful things we see around us. The suffering, the destruction of nature, the wars, the lies and most of all the sheer painful relentless progress of death.
The God of Noah is a God who finds these things utterly intolerable and not just intolerable in the way an emotionally-detached headmaster is appalled by the pupils he never really likes. He is appalled as only a father can be.
The passage reads: 6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
This is the picture of a God who is personally affected by the decisions people make, who grieves and even wishes he had never created man. This is a God who snorts with indignation.
It is the same picture of God we see when Jesus weeps over the body of his friend Lazarus who had died, furious at death’s intrusion into life.
David Atkinson writes: ‘Here is the pain of creative love. Here is the wounded Spirit of the artist whose work is rejected, the broken heart of the lover whose love is not returned’.
History somebody once said is written in the tears of God.
So while the story is about God’s sovereign intervention, about his judgement and justice it is the picture of a judge who is more invested in the life of the defendants than any parallel with a human judge would do justice to. He is a judge who sits on the bench and weeps because it is his own children in the dock.
This is still the God of today who is furious at the violence, the suffering and the monotonous death that is in the world and grieves for the suffering of his children while also being revolted by the things people do.
And to further emphasis this more complex picture of God than many people perceive the central focus of this story is not the flood but God’s relationship with one man.
The intimacy of God
The story is of course not just a distant picture of God as judge but also a picture of God as the intimate friend of Noah. God’s mercy and his judgement are working themselves out together in this story.
Some people read passages like this as implying there is a psychitophrenia to God, he is one minute the judge the next the intimate friend but there we see that he is both these things simultaneously. Even as he judges here, revolted as he is by the things people do, he is also pouring out love and mercy.
In verse 7 ‘I will blot out man’ and yet in verse 8 ‘but’ Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord’
This of course is shown in God’s relationship with Noah
The passage says that God looked at Noah and said ‘I have seen that you are righteous before me’.
We can assume a lot about Noah from that statement because we know what righteous people are like in God’s eyes, they are meek, they are peacemakers, they love justice, they have humble hearts, they are poor in Spirit in that they know where they end and where God begins.
Even as the world is in a state of moral chaos Noah’s faith and obedience to God is seen by God. The storms rage but he is protected by God. In fact the passage says God ‘shut him in’ to the ark. Held him like a womb inside it. IN other words ‘grace found Noah’
Scholars of Hebrew texts tell us that stories like this one were written using a clear literary device intended to build towards once central phrase and then move away from it. The focal point of the text is supposed here to be three words ‘God remembered Noah’.
As God honoured Noah’s obedience something truly remarkable happened. Something happened which is an antidote to anyone who doubts they have a real contribution to make.
We see this world of chaos all around, destruction, death, violence and in the middle we have one man and one man’s relationship with God that becomes what has been called
‘the still point in a turning world’
All through the Bible we see God using people. God finding often very fragile people and blessing them in such a way that they for a moment became the vessel in which God carries his plans for the whole of humanity..
An American anthropologist called Margaret Mead once said ‘a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has’.
I think of Desmond Tutu
The story here reminds us that people who stand humbly before God can see extraordinary things happen in their lives, that the most storm-tossed environment, the most horrific ordeals can not touch the place of safety that is provided by knowing God. Incredible things happen to the humble. Those people who seek first the kingdom of God can see extraordinary things happen.
But is this really about grace.
Some of you will probably be listening to me talking about the compassion of God at work here and you will say. ‘Listen maybe God did save one person but he killed potentially thousands’. Surely that is not a balanced equation. Or more to the point even if the evil in this world does deserve death then surely it is a bit much to paint a compassionate God when only one person could have been saved.
This of course is the problem facing many of us today. We look at the world around us and we see this much suffering and this much happiness and we say ‘;this is not enough evidence of a good God’. Perhaps someone thinks that and encounters the Christian and the Christian says. ‘you should come to church, God’s doing amazing things...only last week he cured my ingrowing toe nail’. And the person retorts ‘ Right well that’s great I guess but I just saw the news and a hundred thousand people were just wiped out by a tsunami’.
Christians cannot sell a good God based on the sum total of the good and the bad that happens in the world. There is too much terrible stuff going on. And we cannot pretend that when God looks at this world he does not just grieve, just weep for the suffering of his children.
That’s not to take away from the good things God does in our lives. He cares enough to bless us in ways that would seem insignificant to anyone else but to us are deep deep signs of his love for that. I celebrate it as what happens in a life touched by the kingdom of God. But its not enough.
The truth is of course that the God shown in Genesis never asks us to form our view on him based on the good things he did for Noah. Neither does he ask us to formulate our view of him based on the good things that happen in the world – though many of them point to him and its our job to point to him.
The greatest insight we have into the heart of God comes in what Noah symbolises. God saved him, he held him in the ark – the ark was his saviour.
In Genesis Jesus is the ark just as in exodus he is the manna from heaven, in Leviticus he is the sacrifices. The whole Bible is full of Christ.
The story of Noah’s ark speaks of a God not who drops in occasionally with random and ultimately insufficient acts of kindness but of a God who promised to Noah in his rainbow and to us in the words of Jesus himself to carry out one total act of kindness. One ultimate act of grace in sending his own Son to provide an ark for all of us, a place of safety in life’s storm – a passage to the promised land.
A solution to the problem more complete than wiping it out, more loving than simply watching us carry on.
The covenant God makes with Noah is that he will find a way for a coming together of people with God and it is a covenant he makes not just with a few ancient people but he says with ‘every living creature’.
There is no easy way to face the suffering of the world. There is and should not be any glib theological solutions preached on the subject. But there is this truth. God provided an ark for Noah and he is providing an ark today, a place of safety, a new life.
Like Noah we apprehend that reality most easily at the end of ourselves WHERE we get to the beginning of God. But like Noah there is a greater promise.
Noah’s alter
Noah’s response to his salvation is to stand up on what we could call his ‘easter morning’ and build an alter to thank God, to remember his ongoing need for the grace of God.
God takes responsibility for so much doesn’t he, our salvation, our justification, our peace, our joy, our destiny. He provides the ark but what he asks is that when he comes, when we encounter him he would find us trusting in him.
Last week we went away with our homegroup here at the Bear and I spoke for peobably an hour over two days on the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and didn’t get very far then as we were leaving and I suppose together pushing against a feeling of being a bit held back, perhaps a bit spiritual directionless in that moment Dan said something : ‘We just have to remember that se just have to give God just a little bit for him to do great things.’
Let’s just try to be a little bit like Noah, a little bit full of conviction that our trust in God matters even if nobody else in the room shares it. Our faith in God can deliver great things against the most unimaginable odds. Our conviction that amazing things happen not to the striving and the proud but to the humble can bring transformation in this world.