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Gen. 7:6 - 8:22 - IT’S RAINING, IT’S POURING, ARE YOU SNORING?? – Part 2
Moses was careful to describe the flood the same way he did for creation. Like Genesis 1, the account of the flood is structured by a careful counting of the days (371 total days!!).
- 7 days of waiting for the waters to come (7:4, 10)
- 40 days of water rising (7:12, 17)
- 150 days of waters prevailing (7:24; 8:3)
- 40 days of water receding (8:6)
- 7 days of waiting for the waters to recede (8:10)
- 7 more days of waiting for the waters to recede completely (8:12)
(AND WE COMPLAIN WHEN WE HAVE JUST A FEW DAYS OF RAIN OR SNOW!!)
Then, In (7:17-24). Moses writes, “For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased, they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.”
We saw a couple weeks ago of how the flood was a reminder to us of the reality of the Final Judgment. God holds the world accountable for its behavior. It tells us that God is grieved over our sin and the harm it does to others, and He will not put up with it forever. We live in a moral universe, and to go against the moral laws which God has built into the world invites disaster. Sin affects our personal lives, our families, our church, our community, our nation, and ultimately, our world.
The Bible says that every mouth will be silenced and that the whole world will be held accountable to God in Rom 3:19. We cannot escape the fact that we are responsible to God for our behavior and that a future judgment is coming when we will answer for the way in which we have lived. That simple fact alone should dramatically affect our perspective in life and make us desire to be faithful to the God who has been faithful to us.
There is a great debate on whether the flood was universal or local. We are not going to get into that debate today, but I encourage you to do a study on it and look at the argument from both perspectives. It seems to be universal and I personally believe it was universal. The thing we have to keep in mind when studying these things is that all things must filter through Scripture! We don’t make the Scripture fit science, rather, science needs to fit Scripture.
In 8:1-5, Moses writes, “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. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 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.”
The word “remember” (8:1) is the high point of this story. It refers to God acting toward someone because of a previous commitment. There are 73 instances in the O.T. where God is said to “Remember.” When Moses wrote that God “Remembered” someone, that mean God extended mercy to him or her by delivering that person from death or from barrenness.
How awesome that God never forgets His own! The man who had obeyed God’s commands about the ark is perfectly safe. He can be sure that God will see the thing through. Yes, it was a stormy sea on which the ark floated, but Noah and his family were perfectly safe. They were never out of the eye of God nor out of the mind of God, and soon God would bring him out. God will always honor His word. Faith is believing that God will do what He said He would. And God remembered Noah!!
My heart rejoices that He knows me!!!! I am His child! “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all - how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32).
The same can be said for you! If He does not know you, you can call out to Him today. Jer. 33:3 makes it easy: “Call unto me (says the LORD), and I WILL answer you.
Join us next week for the conclusion to this section.
Last Update: Aug 26, 2019 7:28 am CDT
