Episode Details

 Remsen Bible Fellowship, 02/04/2024

Introduction

If you get nothing else from this sermon, here is what I want you to walk away with: God always remembers his covenants, God is always faithful. And for that, we should praise him. 

You may have come in this morning feeling like God has forgotten about you, you may doubt whether God is good. There may be circumstances in your life that seem insurmountable, and you don’t see how God could provide salvation. But brothers and sisters, hear me: God sees, God knows, God remembers. 

Last week we left off at the end of Genesis 7. At that point God had not only promised to judge the earth for sin, but he had called Noah, told him that he would enter into covenant with him, and given him instructions to build an ark large enough to house not only his family, but also to carry two of each kind of animal, and food enough for those people and animals to last for a year. Noah obeyed these instructions from God, and that turned out to be salvation for his family: God’s word of judgment held true, and the waters of the flood buried the earth, washing away all human and animal life. Only those inside the ark were saved. At the end of chapter seven, Noah and his family have been in the ark for five months. Today, we’ll pick up the reading in Genesis chapter 8 v1.

Read the Text

Explanation

I know we just read the text, but it is pretty lengthy, so let me recap what we just read. There are several things worth noting. The first, which we’ll come back to, is the fact that God remembers Noah and all the people and animals with him. Because of this, he sends a wind that starts the process of the waters subsiding. The flood language is used now in reverse, as the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven, which had been opened up and burst forth (7:11), are now restrained and closed up (8:2). This period lasts another five months, though - an excruciatingly long time for Noah & co, you would have to think. But then toward the end he begins sending out birds - first a raven, then a dove three times over. First, she finds no place to land, and returns. The second time, she returns, but with an olive branch. And finally, she doesn’t return at all, and Noah knows that it must be dry. Noah and his family spent, all told, one year and ten days on the ark before God tells them (8:15ff) to disembark. 

When they do so, Noah wastes no time in making ready sacrifices of every clean animal which they had brought with them. These sacrifices were pleasing to the Lord, and in the verses that follow we read of the intentions of God’s heart - to never again curse the ground in this way. He chooses rather, to show forbearance to humanity, though every thought of man’s heart is evil from his youth (8:21). As you enter chapter 9, the original creation blessing of Genesis 1 is re-issued, with Noah and his sons being told to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (9:1). 

We also have some lines that might seem strange: the permission to eat meat (9:2-3), and the introduction of capital punishment. The principle at play in both is that the shedding of blood is a serious matter - the life of the animal is symbolized by its blood, and so even though humanity is permitted to eat meat after the flood, it must be from animals that have been properly bled-out. This would seem to prohibit certain pagan cultural practices of eating or drinking blood. 

The blood of man is on another level, altogether, though. To shed man’s blood is to attack the image of God, and to therefore bring upon yourself the punishment of death. For this to be carried out without simply having constant feuds and revenge killings necessitates the forming of civil governments, and so many commentators here see the first institution of government (I think a good argument can be made that the family, built upon marriage, is actually the