Before we begin, I want to start with a little staging and recap in case some of you missed one of the last two weeks. A couple weeks back we began our study of Noah so let's start there…Who is Noah?
When getting to know a person it’s good to start with the basics. What’s their name? We’re told Noah means: “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.” (Genesis 5:29) Which is a link back to Genesis 3, which is the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, in which the serpent, Adam and Eve and the ground are cursed. Man’s relationship with God, with other humans and with the earth is distorted because Adam and Eve take from the tree of knowledge. From that point things spiral out of control into deeper and deeper layers of corruption. Then onto the scene comes Noah - the one who will comfort humanity in their labor and painful toil.
Noah’s name sounds like the Hebrew word for comfort. When reading the scripture it’s best if we take the guidance it gives. It’s so easy to read all kinds of modern ideas and our own opinions into an ancient text like, or to emphasize our own personal interest (Was the flood global or local? Were the nephilim giant demon-spawn? Did Noah have all the animals in this ark? How large, exactly, is a cubit? etc.) but we need to resist that temptation and take the text as it presents itself to us.
I wanted to step back here to make sure we keep this story in its proper frame. What is the story of Noah about according to the Bible? Noah is a story about comfort - comfort from God, for the whole of creation, through one family. It’s not primarily about a flood. It’s not primarily about nephilim giants. It’s not even primarily about God’s anger. According to the text, it’s primarily about God’s desire to comfort his creation which has been subjected to complete degradation which we’ll get into with a bit more details later. That’s what this story is about. Let’s not lose that frame.
Last week in verses 1-8 we heard about the state of the world Noah was living in. It was a place in which “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” Not great, right? Best case scenario, some wildly unsavory people had taken those faithful to God and married their daughters, raising hellions for children each worse than the last. Worst case? Demon-spawn giants were ravaging the land, bending creation and using people for their own self-focused gain. (That’s my personal take, as wild as that may sound to our overly-self impressed modern ears)
In that context, God raises up Noah and his family to bring about a change, to comfort the whole of creation and to realign what had been misaligned. Like Tony Leprotti mentioned last week, through Noah, God is mercifully preserving a remnant of humanity and the world after years upon years of patient tolerance, and this morning we’re going to get into exactly how God plans to do that in more detail. So let’s pray and read our passage and see what the Lord has for us this morning.
Let’s start where the story picks up, Genesis 5:28 and just as a note, you all should know that the Chapters & Verses are not divinely inspired. They were added later simply as references to make communal study and teaching easier. The headings in your bible are just editorial notes. It’s helpful to remember that sometimes when you’re reading a particular passage as it’s broken up in your bible and you’re having difficulty getting the point. Try going further back and reading a bit more context. That’s what we’re doing this morning. Really helpful practice when studying and reading at home! Let’s see how starting in Genesis 5:28 and going to genesis 7:3 adds color to the text this morning.
Read Genesis 5:28 - 7:3
Genesis 6:9-12
Noah was blameless among the people of his time. That’s not a brag. Remember, demon-spawn manipulators are a real contender for his peer group. Compared to them, Noah is righteous. What makes him righteous? Unlike his peers, Noah walked with God. The rest of humanity, as we will see in Genesis 6:11 & 12 are corrupt. To understand what that means we need to think about a couple of things.
What does it mean for Noah to walk with God?
Well… I'm not sure. Noah lived before the giving of the law of Moses, which means he lived before any of the laws given by God and the order of priests. Yet we know from Cain and Abel that early humanity understood that God was worthy of sacrifice and that part of our role in creation was to take what God had so graciously given and offer a portion joyfully back to him. Adam and Eve walked with God and likely discipled their children in what it looked like to live with God as stewards of creation, having been brought up by God himself in the garden. Noah likely learned from his parents who learned from their parents who learned from their parents… and so on and so forth up to Seth - the son of Adam & Eve.
Small detour here. Parents… be encouraged. I know that raising children in this cultural environment is challenging. Our kids are facing lots of challenges we did not face and therefore as parents we’re facing parenting challenges our parents never had to deal with. Don’t disparage your sincere, faithful attempts at parenting well. By God’s grace, Noah’s father raised a son who, despite his faults, walked with God in a world full-to-the-brim with people doing the exact opposite, only and always. Parent well. Read the scriptures with your kids. Pray over and for them. Encourage them toward righteousness. Model repentance and forgiveness, mercy and justice, and walk faithfully with God trusting Him to use it all.
Back to the point - what does walking with God look like? It’s important that we get this detail here because it helps make sense of next week’s passage and it will help us understand why Noah’s first action after the waters recede is to sacrifice some animals and plant a garden.
We’re not told what walking with God looked like, but we are given a contrasting image in verses 11 & 12 about what it does not look like. We’re told:
“11Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.”
Corrupt here shares the same root word as the word for “destroy”. So we could read this passage faithfully like this: “Now the earth had set itself up for destruction in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how bent toward destruction the earth had become, for all the people on earth had destroyed their ways.”
In other words, under the stewardship of these distorted/Nephilim-led people, God’s original design was ruined. Humanity along with creation under its care, had so warped God’s good creation that it had become entirely bent towards its own destruction. And here we begin to see another element of God’s mercy in this story.
God doesn’t show up onto a scene that’s fairly good, just in need of a little correction. No. The picture we’re given is of a God who’s patiently endured for countless generations as generation after generation increasingly bent the whole created order toward self-destruction and is now intervening to prevent it from succeeding. Man was put on earth to direct it with God and offer it back to God, and instead they are exploiting creation and one another for their own satisfaction, turning what was meant to be a loving, generous gift, shared by God, into a means by which to increase their own power and ability and prowess at whatever cost.
God was intervening not only to save humanity from itself, but to save all of creation from humanity. He loves his creation. He made us humans to enjoy it and to steward it righteously toward faithful worship of and fulfillment in God. But that is not the world that Noah lived in and so God steps in, not wishing to see it utterly destroyed. We really need to get this forceful God who’s just mad and like a toddler who doesn’t get his way, starts thrashing the place about. That is NOT what is happening here. The world is already set on a course for total annihilation - God is stepping in, just as he did with Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel and Seth, and now again with Noah.
We through our sinful nature and actions bend the world toward Hell. But God, abounding in grace and mercy, delivers us. Over and over and over again.
God’s always faithful to his plans. There was never a plan B. He always intended for us to rule and reign over creation with and under his Lordship. His good world, ruled by his very good humans. Again and again he steps into the mix to correct and cleanse.
“He is faithful, even when we are faithless. 2 Tim 2:13” That is a summary of the story of God in relationship with us, isn’t it? And here again we see that play out. God, not wishing to see his created world destroyed by its caretakers (we humans) steps in to save us (and creation) from ourselves.
That’s why the flood. That’s why the ark. That’s why the animals. What is God doing in the story of Noah? He is comforting creation. How is he doing that? By destroying everything corrupt and starting fresh.
This is a new creation moment!
He gathers one man and his family, along with all the creatures that inhabit that place, and loads them into an ark. With them he brings two of each kind of creature, subjected to the corruption now being brought under the faithful tutelage of a faithful man. In addition to two of each kind of animal he tells Noah to bring 7 of each animal used in sacrifices to God. Why? What is God doing? What he always has done. He is redeeming the world through one faithful family.
Noah is meant to steward creation gathered to him (like Adam), placed on a mountain-top garden (like Eden), and told to direct creation toward God in faithful stewardship (like Adam and Eve) displayed both in how he relates to creation and how he aims creation.
What is the first act Noah does when they get out of the ark? Sacrificing the holy animals? Why? Because he is aiming creation towards its ultimate purpose - to be humbly received and offered back to God! This is why Noah brings 7 of the sacrificial animals. God desires that Noah would work hard to re-align the created order back to its ultimate goal, being offered back to God and he provides generously, even perfectly, for him to do that well.
Sometimes as modern Christians our view of the gospel is too small. We think that God is only concerned somehow in saving our future souls from some offer out-of-body experience after death. And, in Jesus, we’re told that is true. God will save us from destruction in death through the eternal life of Jesus Christ if we repent of our sins, turn from our self-destructive ways and offer ourselves entirely to him in faith. But that’s not all God’s doing.
God desires for you and I to be who he made us to be. Faithful stewards of God, stewarding and ruling over creation in a way that brings Glory to God and loves well those we share this planet with - especially our fellow humans - but also his other creation.
You and I are sons and daughters of the most High, if we are in Christ!
We are not to be idling, wasting our lives, waiting for some future heavenly state. We were made to live before God humbly and honestly, loving Him and one another while aiming creation back to God. Building righteously. Serving faithfully. Studying the world he’s given us with awe, and asking ourselves how can create even more wonderful, God glorifying good things to offer back to him. We do this as husbands and wives, as brothers and sisters, as artists, gardeners, carpenters, plumbers, doctors and lawyers don’t we?
We take what God gives, study it, and then aim it back to hm making the world more beautiful, richer, fuller, not destroying anyone or anything, but bringing it together into a richer version of itself.
We take the beautiful tree God gave us and turn it into a stunning sanctuary, with beautiful, sturdy pews and bring the tree from the forest into service of the Most high through the gathering of his people in worship.
We take the wheat berries of the field and grind them finely, pulling in some water and salt and adding heat, turning the fruit of the field into the very elements of Communion inviting the wheat to take part in the remembrance and participation of the meal given to nourish our souls.
This is what we are for. This is God’s desire. This is what he’s setting up Noah to do. Why the ark? Why the animals? Why the ample sacrificial animals? God desires to redeem the world, bringing it back into fullness through the right relationship with him and one another. Through Noah, God is attempting to redeem the whole created world.
Ultimately we know that Noah and his sons fail to live up to this grand vision. They stumble and fall pretty quickly and the world spirals out of control again. But unlike Noah, thousands of years later, Jesus arrives on the scene. And where Noah and his sons failed, taking advantage of creation and one another, Jesus does not. Being fully God and fully man, he needs nothing from creation. Instead he comes to serve, to bring us and with us all of creation back into right relationship with our Father.
This is what it means when Colossians tells us that in Jesus God is reconciling ALL things to himself. Through Jesus you and I are invited into fellowship with God, to become his sons and daughters, and to embark on a journey of ambassadorship, declaring to all of creation the good news that there is a better, richer, fuller way of life and it’s free and found in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ! That is good news isn’t it?
Now this morning we are going to celebrate that goodness, with some of the fruit of the fields and fruit of the vine in communion. If you are a Christian, you are more than welcome to celebrate with us. But if you are not, please take this time to reflect on the passage we just read and the words you just heard, and consider committing to follow Christ yourself.
The band will lead us in song. During this time, please examine your heart, confess any unconfessed sin to God, and if you realize that you’ve got some reconciliation to tend to, do so during the song. As you feel led, please come to the table and receive the elements. Once everyone returns to their seats with the bread and cup, we will take the meal together. Afterwards we will sing one final song and go out into the world, hopefully refreshed and nourished, to get busy with the work he has for us. Amen?
Would you all please stand as we prepare to sing in worship?
