The flood story is no less miraculous than the creation story. It is nothing less than the un-creation of the world, taking things back to a Genesis 1:2 like existence, and the re-creation of the world. The miraculous nature of this event cannot be overemphasized. Like the creation story, the flood story does not answer the questions of we moderns. It has its own purpose and will not bow or be conformed to our purpose.
The flood story is presented as historical, just like the creation story, couched in references to time and sequence of events. Noah was a real person and the flood was a real event. To be firmly in the arena of evangelical faith, we must believe Noah is a historical character. That is the playing field for a lot of brothers and sisters who have a range of differing opinions about how the flood happened and what the text actually says happened. I would only caution you to realize that we all bring some presupposition to our interpretation of the text. We must be aware of what is moving us to interpret the text the way we do.i Probably, much thinking about this story is shaped by a Noah’s ark nursery theme.
In preaching through the first 11 chapters of Genesis, I have resisted commenting on Ancient Near Eastern mythological literature as it relates to the Genesis material.ii I’ve done so because I take it to be mythology and the Bible to be true. ANE literature reads like typical mythology, acts like mythology, looks like mythology, I conclude, it is mythology. The Biblical literature is qualitatively different. Comparing and contrasting the two, the Bible is obviously not mythology.
Why believe the Biblical story as opposed to any other creation or flood story? The reason to believe the Biblical story is because the Bible says it is true. The Bible attests to its own truthfulness. Someone may argue, “Isn’t that circular reasoning. I can argue the myth is true and have as sound an argument.” You will have the same argument but not one as sound. The pagan appeals to the myth, the critic appeals to his reason, the believer appeals to the Bible. This is my view on the mythological literature. Now, I want to preach the Bible.
The purpose of the Pentateuch is show that the God of the Sinai covenant is the God who created all things and the God who un-created the world in the flood. If He created the world to bless His people, He will un-create the world and create it again to bless His people. Even in the global judgment of the flood, God upheld His covenant with creation.
Can you imagine how comforting the story of the flood has been to the people of God through the ages? Think of the Israelites about to cross the Jordan River and take possession of the Promised Land from the Canaanites. They watched their unbelieving fathers die in the wilderness. Now they are poised to cross the Jordan. They need to be reminded that God brought Noah through the flood in covenant faithfulness, and Noah even prophesied of their victory (9:25). God brought Noah through the flood, at least in part, to bring them across the Jordan to the Promised Land.
Consider your own life. The reasoning of faith argues that if God went to such lengths to bless His people then, will He not be unhindered in blessing His people now? Trust God, don’t waver, hold fast, His blessing will cover your life. Let me ask you, “If God told you to build an ark, would you do it?” Perhaps, you would argue, “I can’t do it. That is absurd. The neighbors will know I’ve lost it.” Maybe you will insist, “If God told me to do it, I would.” Why then, perhaps, do you resist obeying in the littlest things? God keeps His promises. What does this mean to us?
The account of Noah is a literary masterpiece. No other story is like this story. The story is structured by several literary devices (genealogical, chronologicaliii, thematiciv, covenantal/theological). How the story is structured is important because structure serves as memory hinges for an oral society and helps us understand the meaning of the story. No matter which frame we use to analyze the story, the emphasis is on the covenant. I want to show you this in two ways.
First, the story of Noah (6:9) is housed in the genealogy of Genesis 5. We are introduced to Noah in Genesis 5:28. Unlike the other 9 fathers in Genesis 5, the expected ending of Noah’s genealogy does not come in chapter 5. It comes in Genesis 9:28-29. The story of Noah and the Flood is subsumed in the broader genealogy that started in Genesis 5. Noah then transitions us from the world where Adam is the covenant head to the world where He is the covenant head. The creation covenant is adjusted under Noah to address the issues related to a fallen world. Genesis 1-11 shows us, then, Adam and Noah as heads of the creation covenant. We are beneficiaries of this creation covenant, and this truth is vital to understanding the story before us.
Second, the simplest structure is that the story has two parts. Part one is the step by step acts of Divine justice (6:9-7:24). 8:1a is the turning point in the story. Part two is God’s compassion is re-creating the world (8:1b-9:29). These two parts of the story are framed by three references to the covenant—before (6:18), during (8:1), and after (9:8-17) the flood. God relates to His world through covenants. The story from start to finish is covenantal. Like the story of creation, it is written with a theological purpose in mind. The story is not primarily about Noah and the flood but about God, specifically His covenant keeping. Noah is not the hero of the story, God is.
Genesis 6:18 is the first occurrence of the term covenant in the Bible. A covenant is an oath bound commitment. The Biblical covenants have both conditional and unconditional aspects. Though the word covenant is not used in the creation account, God, nonetheless, entered into covenant with Adam at creation. In His covenant with Adam, God gave him one prohibition. Violation of the covenant on Adam’s part would result in death. Adam failed as the mediator of the covenant. As goes the head of the covenant, so goes everybody else. Adam proved not to be our Savior. He brought sin and death to the human race.
The flood story proves that God was in covenant with Adam and upholds that creation covenant. Though man sinned, breaking the conditional stipulation of the covenant, God upheld His side of the covenant. He blessed man and caused him to prosper. Humans were multiplying, and marrying and giving in marriage without any regard for God (6:1-4). They disregarded the very blessing that they were experiencing. Judgment came on the world in Noah’s day because of Adam’s sin and their complicity in it. Judgment will come on the every man who is in Adam.
In contrast to the ungodly around him, God told Noah, I will establish my covenant with you (6:18). This same language is used in 9:9, 11, and 17. To establish a covenant (heqim berit) is always used of confirming a covenant already in place. To cut or make a covenant (karat berit) is always used of initiating a covenant relationship (Genesis 15:18). Abraham is a good example of initiating a covenant. God is not initiating a new covenant with Noah, but He is confirming a covenant already in existence. In the flood story, God reveals His designs to destroy all flesh…,but establish/uphold His creation covenant with Noah. If God reveals He is going to destroy all flesh, you have to ask, “Are you breaking faith with creation?” God upholds His commitment to his creation covenant by extending grace to Noah as the new mediator of the renewed creation covenant.
Noah is presented in the flood story as a new “little” Adam, so the creation covenant is confirmed with him. Noah is like Adam with the animals (6:19-20; 7:14; 8:17-20; 9:9-10). Notice the language of Genesis 9:1 and see if it sounds familiar. This time, however, the stipulations of the covenant change. No longer is the prohibition not to eat of the tree, but it is not to eat flesh with its life in it and not to murder humans (9:4, 5). God imposes changes in the creation covenant to insure the prospering of man and animals (9:1-7). God promises to never destroy the world with a flood again and sets the rainbow in the sky as the sign of the covenant (9:8-17).
Is this story about judgment or salvation? It’s about both. Salvation is primary because the story moves toward the salvation of Noah and his family and the new world that results. All we are told about the judgment and death of the ungodly is that God intends to destroy them (6:13b). There is no description of their demise. We do not hear them knocking on the door of the ark, nor do we hear their drowning cries. We are simply told they died (7:21). There is a connection in the story between salvation and judgment. For salvation to come, judgment must take place. God will judge the world to bless His people.
Perhaps some of you are thinking, “God is not blessing me. The car broke down, my tooth fell out, the bills are due, and I’m am unhappy. I keep praying and asking and hoping but God is not delivering.” I know life gets difficult. You can have trouble that you don’t ask for. In that case, cling to Jesus. He suffered unjustly. Others of you, perhaps, have gotten yourself in a position where God can’t bless you. He can only discipline you.
As a parent want to shower my children with privilege and fill their desires, but often privilege became license and their desires were for things that would harm them. I want to ask, “Why should God give you what you are asking and hoping for?” Can He trust you with it? You’re sick and you want God to heal you? Yet, you won’t live a life of obedience. You need money, yet, you won’t give. You get, and you give to the world what God says belongs to Him. Don’t you see God is disciplining you, so He doesn’t have to judge you?
Our lives are to be distinguishable from the ungodly. Perhaps some of you live in such a way that you are indistinguishable from the world. You do what the ungodly do, go where the ungodly go, talk like the ungodly talk, and act how the ungodly act. At some point you simply have to come to the conclusion, “I may be ungodly.” I realize that Christians do ungodly things and act in ungodly ways at times. I want to extend grace to my brother and sister and hope they will extend grace to me. But when you become known for ungodliness, it may indicate that you are just plain old ungodly. Lee mentioned an illustration of this to me. Someone said to D.L. Moody concerning a drunk lying on the street, “Mr. Moody, there is one of you converts.” Moody replied, “He must be one of mine because he is not one of the Lord’s.” We are going to see some ungodliness in Noah before the story is over, but he is set in contrast to his generation (6:9).
In Genesis 6:8, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord, and in 6:9-13, the grace of God worked in his life to produce a man discernable from his generation. Grace is not an abstract. The gospel is not simply a set of propositions. Grace is a person. The gospel is a person. It is not enough to say, “I believe Jesus died for my sin, and rose again on the 3rd day.” Those propositions don’t save you. Salvation is a personal relationship with Jesus based on the truth of who He is as the Bible presents Him to us. We are saved by a Person who is a present reality in our lives. He’s not simply interested in keep you out of hell. He is concerned about your life—marriage, children, church, finances, recreation, etc. Grace impacts all aspects of our lives.
This text has 3 commands—Make yourself and ark (6:14), Go into the ark (7:1), Go out from the ark (8:16). We are explicitly told 4 times that Noah did all that God commanded him (6:22; 7:5, 9, 15). In 8:18, Noah’s obedience to the command to leave the ark is highlighted. Noah is distinguished by grace and obedient faith. Obeying God was a huge task. The ark was as big as1and a half football fields.
This flood story is a story where God talks. Ten times from 6:1-9:29, we hear the refrain, And God said (6:3, 7, 13; 7:1; 8:15, 21; 9:1, 8, 12, 17). This is the same number of times the refrain is used in the creation account. From the time Noah went in the ark (7:1) to the time he came out of the ark (8:15), he heard nothing from God. Heaven is silent as Noah sits in the ark for a year. As a reader, we are allowed to peer into the mind of God twice and know His thoughts (6:6-7; 8:21), once before and once after the flood. We see God both grieved and pleased, but then we are shutout from the inner workings of His mind as He enacts judgment on the ungodly. Yet, from the time Noah heard the command to enter the ark (7:1) to the time he heard the command to leave the ark (8:16), he heard nothing from God.
You can understand why Noah sent the raven and dove out the ark to see if the earth was inhabitable (8:6-12). The ark bottomed after 7 months (8:4). Noah and all in the ark had been sitting there for 5 months waiting. Perhaps, Noah is thinking I have to do something. Yet, even after the dove did not return and Noah could see the earth was dry (8:13), he waited for God to tell him to leave the ark. This is a remarkable story. It tells us of the obedience of faith.
In Romans 1, Paul described his mission in terms of bringing about the obedience of faith for the sake of His Name among the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ (Romans 1:5-6). The Bible knows nothing of a faith that does not obey. This is why whatever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23). This is why the obedience of faith is in the Great Commission, Teach them to do all I have commanded. Faith obeys. It doesn’t pick and choose what it will obey. Faith simply obeys the truth it knows. As Christians grow and learn, obedient faith, hopefully, will look different, but it will always obey.
Someone may say, “Pastor Tom, you are sounding a little bit legalistic here.” Since when did faith born obedience become legalism? Obedient faith is the opposite of legalism. Legalism will send you to hell. Legalism says, “If I do x,y,z, God will approve of me.” At its very core, legalism is a challenge to the sufficiency of Christ. Obedient faith flows out of a relationship where God has already approved of you on the basis of the work of Christ in your behalf.
Let’s take giving for example, legalism says, “I have to give.” Then it feels condemnation for what is given. Obedient says, “Wow, I get to give.” And then strives to give more. It says, “Ok, God, I gave this, but I want to give that. I don’t want to be proud or presumptuous, so I am going to give some more, but I warning you if you bless me, I am going to give more.” Faith cannot help but obey. Legalism cannot obey. Faith finds joy on obeying. Legalism finds condemnation.
He we need a word about the objective and subjective guidance of the Holy Spirit. The obedience of faith is shaped by the Word of God and subjectively guided by the Holy Spirit. Remove the tension between these two. They are not in conflict. The Word of God is the objective guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will not subjectively guide you to disobey the Word. The Spirit us not going to lead you to commit adultery, etc. Also, you don’t need to have the subjective guidance of the Spirit to obey the Word. You can’t say, “I’ll give when the Spirit leads me.” Let’s take baptism since the flood is a type of baptism. The Word is clear, “Get in the ark.” To refuse baptism is to say, “I am not concerned with what the Spirit says. I don’t need to show I’ve been delivered from the wrath of God by the Son of God.”
Noah lived his life in Adam’s world in light of a world to come. That perspective impacted how he lived. He built an ark. I cannot imagine what a spectacle that must have been. I think I would notice if my neighbor was building an ark! Although, we hear nothing from Noah through this whole story, until he curses he grandson (9:25, Cursed be Canaan), the NT calls him a herald of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5) and asserts that Christ was spiritually present in his preaching (1 Peter 3:19-20). The building of the ark itself was a loud presentation of the gospel.
The flood of Noah’s day anticipates the coming judgment of God on the ungodliness of this present age. The Bible says, Scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they 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 that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. (2 Peter 3:3-7 ESV)
Only by faith in Christ our new covenant head will we escape the judgment to come.
We are to live in this present age like the coming age is of value to us. This text anticipates a final judgment to come. The NT writer concludes, since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in 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 a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:11-13).
Some of you are preparing to live in this world. We sing about the gospel and of the age to come, but we live like the only reality is this world. Make all of your investments in this in light of the one to come. We have all kinds of competing values. I am not trying to tell you to not enjoy your life here. I trying to tell you to only way you will enjoy your life here. I am preaching and pleading for your joy. It seems to me, however, if there is correlation between investment here and dividends there, there will be a lot of poverty in the world to come.
As we said, Noah is depicted as the new head, the new Adam, of the updated creation covenant. As such he is the representative head of all that are on the ark. In 6:18, You is singular. In other words, everybody who is on the ark is on it because of Noah. In 7:1, God tells Noah to Go into the ark, you and all your household. In 7:23b, Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. As the representative head of the covenant, God confirming the covenant with Noah establishes the covenant with all men and animals (9:17). We may be tempted to think that salvation is in Noah.
But then we have this odd story of Noah planting a vineyard and becoming intoxicated, and laying naked in his tent (9:18-27). This story shows us the inadequacy of Noah as a covenant head. The parallel with the garden story is telling. There is fruit, in Noah’s case drinking, nakedness, and the downfall of a son. We have some indication of the sin of Ham by the actions of His brothers. Ham saw his father’s nakedness. Shem and Japheth avoid seeing Noah’s nakedness by walking backwards in his tent with a garment to cover Noah.
As a result of Ham’s sin, Noah curses Canaan, Ham’s son. What is the point of the story?
Immediately, if you were an Israelite about to cross Jordan to take possession of the land from the Canaanites, you see that victory was prophesied long ago. What about us? The storyline of the Bible is framed in covenants. Each covenant head is a type of Christ. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David were all types of Christ. I mentioned that covenants are both conditional and unconditional. Adam failed as covenant head and plunged the race into sin. The little Adams—Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David failed as covenant heads. With each covenant head, God made known more and more of His plan to redeem His fallen creation. Yet, their failure continually directed all to look for another covenant head who would not fail.
Jesus came and fulfilled all the conditional stipulations of the covenant and became the head of the New Covenant. Though He lived a perfect life fulfilling every requirement of the law, He died as a covenant breaker. In His death, He bore the flood of the wrath of God that was against us because of our covenant breaking sin, so that His perfect life counts for all who place their faith in Him. With every stipulation of the covenant fulfilled in Christ and with all covenant breaking rectified in His death, all who trust in Christ are the recipients of all the covenant benefits that come because of His righteous life and atoning death, namely, the forgiveness of sin and eternal life as sons.
Today, if you will place your faith in Christ, He will forgive you of your sin. He plunged Himself in the flood of wrath that sinner deserve, so that I today can offer salvation and the forgiveness of sins to all who repent and believe.
As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, we to give testimony to His sinless life, atoning death, and justifying resurrection for the salvation of sinners. What happens if you don’t place your faith Him? There is nothing left but judgment. When God shut the door to the ark (7:16), there was no opening it. Jesus said, His coming will be like the days of Noah, They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man (Matt. 24:38-39).