Sermon Tone Analysis

Genesis 8:15-22 (Evangelical Heritage Version)

15God spoke to Noah.

He said, 16“Go out of the ark—you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.

17Bring out with you every living thing of every sort that is with you, all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may swarm over the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

18Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives along with him.

19Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever swarms on the earth went out of the ship, species by species.

20Noah built an altar to the Lord and took from every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

21The Lord smelled the pleasant aroma.

The Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he forms in his heart are evil from his youth.

Neither will I ever again strike every living thing, as I have done.

22While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

Gratitude

I.

Evil.

An incredible evil filled the world.

It often feels to me like the world has become more evil.

For decades killing babies in the womb was completely legal in this country.

Evil.

The Supreme Court overturned the ruling that had trumped states’ rights for decades and sent the matter back to the various states.

Immediately, groups within Michigan sought signatures to put a referendum on the ballot this fall that, if passed, will enshrine abortion in Michigan’s constitution.

The amendment to the Michigan constitution will be one of the most radical laws in the entire world.

There are all kinds of other evils in our world today.

There has been a conscious effort to turn sins once seen by most as aberrational into acceptable, and even desirable, behavior.

Those who would follow a Biblical perspective have been marginalized.

It seems unloving to call a sin a sin.

Perhaps every generation of Christians takes a look around and believes the culture to be deteriorating.

Perhaps every generation thinks things are more evil than they ever have been.

It’s not so.

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and that all the thoughts and plans they formed in their hearts were only evil every day.

6The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with sorrow.”

(Genesis 6:5-6, EHV).

The wickedness of the pre-Flood world was more intense than anything we can possibly imagine.

“God looked at the earth and saw that it was corrupt, for all flesh was corrupt in all their ways on the earth” (Genesis 6:12, EHV).

There were precious few believers in the world at that time.

“Noah was a righteous man, a man of integrity in that generation.

Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9, EHV).

Other great Bible figures, like Elijah, would think there were no believers left on the earth.

Noah could have actually said it and have been right.

Only he and his family still believed in God.

God told Noah that he was going to destroy everything because of the great, unchecked, evil that filled the earth.

“I myself am about to bring a flood of waters on the earth, in order to destroy all flesh under the sky that has the breath of life.

Everything that is on the earth will die” (Genesis 6:17, EHV).

I wonder if Noah was grateful.

After all, he and his family were to be preserved.

Noah was to build an ark—really just a box that would float.

It wasn’t a simple project.

The Bible doesn’t say exactly when construction of the ark began.

God told Noah his sons and their wives would be on the passenger manifesto.

If the boys were married before construction began, it would have taken at least 50 years.

If Noah began building when his sons were little, it could have taken up to 100 years.

I wonder if Noah was grateful when he realized all the work building that ark would entail.

There were plenty of materials needed to build the giant box at the Noah compound.

As materials were gathered and the project began to take place, questions were undoubtedly asked by the neighbors.

Some of Noah’s time was undoubtedly spent in warning the people about God’s intentions to destroy the world.

The ark was to house many animals, including livestock domesticated for humans to use, and also every other kind of animal that humans would not normally welcome in close proximity.

The Bible gives dimensions for the exterior of the ark, but not specifics about the interior.

Perhaps God gave more detail to Noah than is recorded for us.

Perhaps Noah was to use his own ingenuity and that of the world of his day to come up with other specifics for housing all the animals and making the systems that would sustain them through a world-wide flood event.

The Ark Museum in Kentucky has made some very scholarly guesses based on as much as we know about the pre-flood world.

Their speculations about how Noah and his family and the animals survived is very interesting.

Visit it sometime, if you want a detailed explanation of many plausible systems for the ark.

II.

The time came for God’s plans to be fulfilled.

Noah and his family and all the animals were loaded on to the Ark.

Do you think Noah and family were filled with gratitude as they loaded into the ark?

God’s stated purpose was to destroy everyone and everything.

Did they take a last look at the faces that would soon be screaming in agony at God’s judgment?

It began.

“All the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened” (Genesis 7:11, EHV).

The flood waters rose not just from rain pouring down from the sky, but also from the depths of the earth.

The flood God sent on the earth completely altered the landscape.

Mountains were undoubtedly pushed up by the waters of the deep flowing.

Inside the ark, were Noah and his family filled with gratitude?

After all the years of preparation, could they just sit around on deck chairs having a nice vacation?

40 days and 40 nights rain poured from the sky and gushed up from the earth.

There was no nice, dry deck to sit on.

But there was also work to be done.

Both during and after the rain the work was constant.

Animals needed to be fed and their waste removed.

Equipment needed constant mending.

The people themselves had to make sure that everything was sustainable for the duration of their voyage.

Still, the water rose.

“The water overwhelmed the earth.

All the high mountains that were under the entire sky were covered.

20The waters rose more than twenty feet above the mountains and covered them” (Genesis 7:19-20, EHV).

Even new mountains that were pushed up from the fountains of the deep were covered by at least 20 feet of water.

“All living creatures that moved on the earth perished...23Every living thing that was on the face of the earth was wiped out, including mankind, livestock, creeping things, and birds of the sky.

They all were wiped off the earth.

Only Noah was left, as well as those who were with him in the ark” (Genesis 7:21, 23, EHV).

God had said it would happen this way.

The destruction he prophesied was complete.

Do you think Noah and his family were filled with gratitude when the rains stopped?

They could look out the little windows at the top of the ark, but all they could see was water.

Everywhere.

For 150 days the waters stayed high above the highest mountain.

Then: “God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided.

2The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were also closed, and the rain from the sky was restrained.

3The waters kept receding from the earth” (Genesis 8:1-3, EHV).

As the flood receded, the water did what flood waters do as they recede: it carved out rivers and canyons and further altered the landscape.

This process took another 150 days.