They say the first thing to go is your sense of the
hereafter. You walk into a room and wonder, “What did I come in here after?” Earlier
this week, I claimed to be having a “senior moment,” but was told that I was
not yet old enough to use that excuse. Whatever factor we chalk it up to, or
excuse we make, the undeniable fact is that we are a forgetful lot. A great
example of this is found in Scripture, when Joseph was imprisoned, and he asked
Pharaoh’s cupbearer to “please do me a kindness by mentioning me to Pharaoh”
(Gen 40:14). The Bible says simply, “Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember
Joseph, but forgot him.” Most of us can relate to that. That is why we are
especially grateful that we have a God who never forgets.
Sometimes we can feel as though God has forgotten us. We
find ourselves in the midst of hardship or difficulty, worse yet, hit with wave
upon wave of suffering. We may wonder, “Does God even know what I am going
through? Does He even care? Has He forgotten about me?” Noah may have been
tempted to feel that way. By the time our text begins, Noah had been holed up
in the ark for about 5 months and a week. Think about where you were on August
30 of last year. That’s how long Noah had been on the ark when Chapter 8
begins. The incessant sound of torrential downpour had hammered on the roof of
the ark for almost six weeks. The waves of the great flood had bombarded the
sides or the ark, tossing it back and forth. His only human companions were his
wife and three sons and three daughters-in-law. They were surrounded by
animals, and by this time had either grown immune or weary of the odor. Food
supplies may have begun to concern them. They may have wondered if they would
die on board the ark, or if they would ever be able to emerge from it. It must
have felt as though they had been forgotten. But Chapter 8 opens with these
simple words, “But God remembered Noah.”
Now when you and I “remember” something, it means that
something comes to mind that we have previously forgotten. But we also use the
term in a different way. Sometimes when we say we “remember” something, it is
to say that we could never forget it. We remember our wedding day. We remember
where we were on 9/11. We remember our loved ones’ birthdays. How could we
forget? And it is this second sense in which the Bible speaks of God
remembering. To say that God “remembers” is to say that God never forgets. And
so Noah discovered, as must we all, that God never forgets His people or His
promises. He remembers.
I. God Remembers His People (8:1-20)
When we look at the entire flood narrative from Chapter 6 to
Chapter 9, we find that this statement, “God remembered Noah,” becomes the
turning point of the story. Prior to this statement, the waters are rising.
Afterward the waters are receding. Everything before this marks an end of
creation as it was known; afterward, everything marks a new beginning. Noah,
you will remember, was introduced to us as a unique person of his generation
who had “found grace (or favor) in the eyes of the Lord.” God had chosen Noah
to be the object of His saving grace. Noah had been invited into a personal
relationship with God, which was received by Noah’s faith, and which was
maintained by God’s faithfulness. In the security of this personal
relationship, there is assurance that God never forgets, but always remembers
His people.
Because God remembers His people, He works on their behalf.
In fact, the Hebrew word “remember” which occurs here in our text indicates far
more than just mental recall. Some 73 times in the Old Testament, we read of
God “remembering,” and in each case the indication is that God is taking action
toward that person.[1] He acts
upon His previous commitment to His people. And that is what He is doing here
with Noah. Notice that because God
remembered Noah, He did something. Verse 1 says that He caused a wind to pass over
the earth, and the water subsided. Surely the natural hydrological cycles were
at work here, but behind and beneath them, God was orchestrating the events for
the benefit of the chosen object of His grace.
Friends, we must come to understand this. There are times in
our lives when our circumstances tempt us to conclude that God has forgotten
about us, or that He has gone on vacation or something and left us to deal with
our struggles on our own hopeless resources. But this is never the case. When
we live in a personal relationship with God by His grace, we can have the
confidence that He remembers us – that He will never forget us! – and that He
is always at work on our behalf, even when we do not perceive what it is that
He is doing. Because He remembers His people, He works.
Next, we find that God’s remembrance of Noah causes Noah to
do something as well. Because Noah trusts that God does remember him and is
working on his behalf, Noah waits.
The narrative from verse 4 to verse 14 seems to slow down to a snail’s pace,
and it is punctuated throughout with timestamps. Verse 4 says that the ark came
to rest upon the mountains of Ararat on the seventh month, on the seventeenth
day. But it was almost three months later before the tops of the mountains
became visible, as verse 5 indicates, “in the tenth month, on the first day of
the first day of the month.”
Verse 6 says that after 40 more days had passed (6 weeks
from the mountain tops becoming visible), Noah sent out a raven. The raven
“flew here and there,” seemingly never returning to the ark. Ravens are
“carrion birds,” who feed upon anything and everything, including the carcasses
of the dead. The raven was able to fly long distances at great heights, finding
plenty to eat and high places in the mountain peaks to make a home. At some
point later, Noah sent forth a dove. Doves and pigeons are closely related, and
both have a unique homing sense. The dove was able to go out and return,
because there was no place for the dove to settle outside of the ark yet.
Another week passes, according to verse 10, and Noah sent
out the dove a second time. This time, the dove returned holding a “freshly
picked olive leaf.” This was an indication that vegetation below the treelines
of the mountains had emerged, but there was still no dwelling place available.
Finally, in verse 12, another week elapses, and Noah sends out the dove again,
and this time the dove does not return. Conditions for sustaining life on the
earth were improving.
Verse 13 says that on the first day of the first month of
the 601st year, the water was dried up from the earth. To put that
into perspective, this is approximately 11 months after Noah boarded the ark,
and about four months after the ark had come to rest on the mountain. The final
time stamp is in verse 14, where we read that on the 27th day of the
second month (nearly two months after verse 13), the earth was finally
completely dry. And it was then that God said to Noah, “Go out of the ark.”
Now, what is the point of all this tedious inscription of
the slow passage of time? It is to demonstrate Noah’s patient waiting on the
Lord. Because He knew that the Lord had remembered him, he was able to wait for
the Lord to speak about what he was to do next. And he did not do anything
until the Lord spoke. There is an important application for us here. If we are
convinced, and believe by faith, that the Lord remembers us, that He never
forgets us, and that He is working on our behalf for our good and His glory
according to the promises of His word, then we can be patient as we wait for
Him. Like Noah, we can abide under the momentary afflictions that come our way,
the temporary discomforts and inconveniences, knowing that in His own time and
according to His perfect will, God’s work will be done. And until we are
certain that our next step of faith is one of obedience to Him, we can wait
because we believe He remembers us.
Notice there is one other thing that we observe here in
Chapter 8 that flows out of the assurance that God remembers His people.
Because He remembers His people, He works and we wait, but we also see in verse
20 that we worship. Notice the first thing Noah does upon emerging from the
ark. He builds an altar to the Lord. I suppose that the average person might
think first to build shelter for himself, but not Noah. In grateful worship for
the Lord’s gracious remembrance of him, he builds an altar and makes a
sacrifice.
Although in our popular folklore, we tend to think of Noah
only taking two of every kind of animal on board the ark, the Bible actually
tells us that there were more of certain animals. In 7:2, the Lord told Noah to
take the clean animals “by sevens,” and only two of the unclean animals. The
distinction between the two has not been revealed yet in Scripture, but when it
comes later, the clean animals will be specified as those which are fit for
eating and for sacrificing in worship. The phrase “by sevens” could mean seven,
with three pairs for mating and a spare for sacrifice, or “seven pairs.” In
ether case, the point is the same: God provided more than was necessary for the
mere survival of the species. Those which man would be able to eat and offer to
God in worship were to be more abundant.
In building the altar and offering the sacrifice, Noah was
engaging in worship. He was thanking God for His provision and for His
faithfulness to deliver him and his family. He was also confessing to God his
own unworthiness for this divine favor. Noah recognized that he was saved by
grace, and in gratitude for grace, and as a confession of his reliance on that
grace, he offered this sacrifice to the Lord. Because God had remembered him,
he worshiped.
In Isaiah 49:14-16, the people of Israel who were undergoing
captivity and enslavement say, “The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has
forgotten me.” But God’s response is this: “Can a woman forget her nursing
child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but
I will not forget you. Behold I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.”
We who have come into a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus
Christ find all the more assurance in these words. By God’s grace, He has
rescued us from sin through the offering of Jesus Christ on the cross. He died
to take our penalty for sin upon Himself that we might be saved. And just as
the disciples were able to see the nail prints in the hands of the risen Jesus,
so the Lord says, “I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands. Whenever He
sees the wounds that Christ endured for us on the cross, He remembers those who
are the special objects of His grace. How could He ever forget those who were
ransomed by the shedding of the very blood of His only begotten Son? A mother
would more likely forget her own child than that God should forget His
blood-bought children. He remembers! Therefore, He works on our behalf, and we
wait on Him with patience, and we worship Him with our lives, because God
remembers His people.
II. God Remembers His Promise (8:21-9:17)
Mark Twain once famously said, “If you tell the truth you
don’t have to remember anything.” As we have seen in political and celebrity
scandals, when a person lies to cover up lies with more lies, they can catch
themselves in an awkward web of “misremembering” important details. Twain’s
memorable remark is simply an admonition to be honest, for then one doesn’t
have to remember what was told to whom and when, for it was always the truth
being told. Of course, when God speaks, He speaks the truth. In Numbers 23:19,
we read, “God is not a man, that He should lie.” And because He always speaks
the truth, He is never in danger of “misremembering” a promise that He has
made. The second occurrence of God “remembering” in this passage is found in
9:15. There He assures Noah that He will
remember His covenant. He can never forget a single one of the many promises He
has made.
In 8:21-22, immediately following Noah’s offering on the
altar, we find that God’s promises are made with grace. The Lord was pleased
with Noah’s offering, as indicated by the statement, “The Lord smelled the
soothing aroma.” This is a literary device here featuring a play on words with
the word “soothing,” and the name “Noah.” Remember that Noah’s father gave him
this name “This one will give us rest” (5:29). The name “Noah” means “rest,”
and the Hebrew word is very closely connected to the word here for “soothing.”
The idea is not that Noah had placated an angry God to repent of His unbridled
vengeance. It is that Noah had honored the Lord, and that finally the Lord was
receiving the worship that was due him after humanity had dishonored him for so
many generations. God was taking pleasure in the worship and obedience of Noah
and it rose up before Him like a soothing aroma. And so God makes a promise. He
says, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man.”
But notice that this promise is saturated with grace, for
the very next thing the Lord says is, “for the intent of man’s heart is evil
from his youth.” You will recall that this is exactly what the Lord said of the
human race prior to the flood. “Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually” (6:5). So the flood did not “fix” human depravity. Man’s
fallen nature remains unchanged after the flood, as Noah will demonstrate at
the end of Chapter 9 when his story comes to a close. Noah’s story begins with
a man transformed by grace, and ends with a drunk, naked, shamed man. He is a reminder
to us that the most important part of our story is how it ends. But though man
remains radically corrupted by sin after the flood, God promises to deal with
man in grace – that is, not to bring about what man deserves, but to treat
mankind better than he deserves. The Lord says, “I will never again destroy
every living thing, as I have done.” It is not that we don’t deserve that, but
that God has a better promise for humanity. The flood has wiped the earth clean
of the symptoms of human sinfulness. But it did not uproot the disease. In the
future, God would deal with the disease in the life, death, resurrection and
return of Jesus Christ and destroy sin fully and finally when the seed of woman
trampled the head of the serpent as promised in the Garden.
So, as long as the earth remains (which is not a promise
that it will remain forever, because it won’t), there will be the normal,
dependable rhythms of life and time: seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night. Last week, you may have seen the news
concerning the Twitter account of Badlands
National Park Badlands tweeted, “Today, the amount of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000
years.”[2]
Now, please understand, I am not making any kind of bold claims about climate
change here, but I want you to see just how alarmingly unscientific such a
statement is. How long has mankind had the tools necessary to measure the
amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? And how long have those records
been kept? Certainly not 650,000 years! Science, when done rightly, deals with
observable, measurable data. Claims about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere
for the last 650,000 years exceed those bounds. However, when we look at the
human history we do have, we find that God’s word stands on its own merits.
There have been times of sowing and reaping, times of cold and heat, times of
summer and winter. Sometimes, the trends have been warmer, sometimes colder.
But, the world keeps turning, the sun keeps rising, and life goes on with a
dependable sense of regularity. Mankind need not live in fear that the glaciers
are going to melt and flood the world, because God has promised that it won’t
happen again. Not that we don’t deserve it, mind you, because our cultural
conditions are no different than in the days of Noah. But because God has made
a promise with grace.
We notice as well that God makes a promise with blessings. Chapter
9 opens with language that sounds exactly like God’s blessing and promises to
man when Adam was first created. And this is for good reason. With the
emergence of Noah from the ark, we have a “new beginning” of creation. And here
in this new creation, though man is still deeply scarred by sin, man still
bears the image of God in which he was created. And so, just as God blessed the
first man and woman, he blesses Noah and his sons in similar terms.
The first blessing in God’s promise gives life purpose. Just
as Adam was blessed and commissioned to be fruitful and multiply and to
exercise dominion in the world over all creation, so Noah and his sons were
blessed with the same purpose (9:1). Because the human race at this point
consisted of only eight people, it was essential that they repopulate the
earth. God’s intention was that the world would be filled with the creatures
that bore His image. So, life’s purpose is about more than just having babies.
It is about filling the earth with the divine image that is found in man, even
though that image is marred by sin. And as man exercises dominion on the earth,
God’s will is carried out through them. Man rules in creation on God’s behalf
as His vice-regents. But notice that now there is a difference. The harmony
that once existed between humanity and the animal kingdom is now corrupted. The
Lord says, “The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every best of the
earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground,
and all the fish of the sea” (9:2). They are still given into the hands of men,
but now this dominion will be carried out with a struggle. But still, human
life has a purpose under this blessing and promise of God. They are to
represent God by reproducing His image and ruling creation on His behalf.
Second, we notice that God’s promise comes with the blessing
that gives life provision. Originally, Adam and Eve were permitted to eat from
any and every tree and plant of the garden except one. It was not merely for
health or dietary reasons that the human race was initially vegetarian. It was
because death had not entered into the world. Death came by sin, and as far as
we can tell, the first physical death that ever happened on the earth was that
of the sacrificial animal that was killed so that God could provide coverings
of skin for Adam and Eve after their sin. But now that death was commonplace in
the world, there was no reason to prohibit the eating of meat. So, the Lord
says, “Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to
you, as I gave the green plant.” But there are boundaries to this blessing.
First, notice that God says, “everything that lives.” That means that man must
trust God’s promise to provide and not resort to scavenger living by eating
things found dead. Also, man must abstain from savagery, and “not eat flesh
with its life, that is, its blood.” There must be a respect for life, and life
is represented by blood. Leviticus 17:11 says that “the life of the flesh is in
the blood,” and it is for this reason that blood is offered as a sacrifice for
atonement. It represents the giving of a life. Mankind is not to disregard the
sacredness of life by carelessly eating and drinking blood. The animal life
that he takes for food must be handled with care, and prepared with care.
Because God has promised to provide, man can obey God and trust Him to provide
the food that is necessary to sustain life without becoming bloodthirsty
savages and scavengers.
We also see that God’s promise comes with the blessing of
life’s protection. Because of the divine image in mankind, human life bears a
unique sacredness. Therefore, God promises to defend human life above all else.
“Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it, and
from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.” This
means that any animal or human who takes the life of a human being will be put
to death. “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in
the image of God He made man” (9:6).
This does not authorize vigilante style justice, and it is
not necessarily a blanket endorsement of all instances of capital punishment,
but it does establish the role of human government in defending the rights and
life of mankind. The architects of American government understood this, and
said in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty , and the Pursuit
of Happiness.” Because humanity has the right to live the life that God has
given him, no one else has the right to take that life away. Mankind is thus
commissioned to govern one another to protect this and other rights that are
inherent in the created order. As one writer says, “innocent human beings have
a right not to be deliberately killed.” Thus, when Christians stand today for
the protection of human life, from the unborn child in his mothers’ womb, to
the elderly, infirm, and disabled, we are standing for God and the protection
of life that is created in His image. God has promised to defend human life,
and that promise comes with the blessing of His protection.
God, as you can see, remembers His promise. His promise is
made with grace, and it is made with blessings. But finally we see that God’s
promise is made with assurance. We see it in the language used to describe the
promise. God calls it a covenant.
This is a binding and unbreakable promise. Now a promise of this kind is only
as valid as the word of the one who makes it, and for that reason, we ought to
draw great assurance from this promise. We see that the One who authors and
offers this covenant and the One who stands behind to uphold it and carry it
out is none other than God Himself. Notice the repetition of the first person
pronouns throughout the passage. Verse 8, God says “I Myself do establish My
covenant with you.” Verses 11, “I establish My covenant with you.” Verse 12, “This is the sign of the
covenant which I am making.”
Verse 15, “I will remember My covenant.” Verse 17, “This is
the sign of the covenant which I
have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.” The assurance
we have is that God will not break the promises that He has made to mankind
because it is His covenant. He made it. He established it. The promises of God
are certain because they rest on God’s faithfulness.
Notice not only does God make
His covenant, but He also memorializes
it with a sign that assures us that He will remember His promise. He says
in verse 12, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making.” And that
sign is given in verse 13, “I set My bow in the cloud and it shall be for a
sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.” Now some of the English
translations use the word “rainbow” here in this passage, and certainly it is a
rainbow of which God speaks. But the word that God uses is simply the word
“bow,” and it is the same Hebrew word that is used to describe the weapon of
the archer. God says, in effect, “I have hung up the bow, and promise to no
more fire the weapon of my judgment at the earth in this same way that I have
with the flood.” He says, “It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the
earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My covenant.”
The rainbow is the memorial which God has set in the sky as
the assurance of His promise to never again flood the earth with the waters of
judgment. It is not a promise that judgment will never again come, for it
certainly will. But it is a promise that judgment will not come in the same
way. If you think of the rainbow as a bow, a weapon, consider how it is
suspended in the sky. The arch of the bow is pointed, not toward the earth, but
toward heaven itself. And in this, we see a foreshadowing of how God will keep
the promise of His covenant with mankind. The next time the arrow of His
judgment would fire, it would fire, as it were, upon Himself as God incarnate
was nailed to the cross at Calvary to take the
flood of judgment for man’s sin upon Himself. So, when you see the rainbow in
the sky, you know that God has made a promise that He can never forget, and
will always remember. He has promised that He will take the arrow of judgment
on our behalf and never again flood the earth with watery judgment. And this
promise is as sure as any other that God ever made. Jesus said that He was
making a new covenant with His followers – a covenant symbolized not by a
rainbow, but by a cup and by bread. The bread and the cup symbolize that His
covenant was established with us by the breaking of His body and the shedding
of His blood. He has promised to save us from the judgment of fire that will come
upon the earth at the consummation of His kingdom.
We began our service with a reading from Isaiah 11 that
speaks of life in the coming kingdom
of Christ
We serve a God who remembers His people, therefore He works
on our behalf while we wait and worship. He remembers His promise, made with
grace, delivered with blessings, and guaranteed with assurance. Hear His words
of love inviting you into this blood-sealed covenant to become a citizen of
this kingdom for which we all long.
[1] Victor
Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters
1-17 (New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1990), 299.
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