The New Creation

Overview

Last week we explored the ark as a picture of salvation and the flood is an act of judgment

The condition of the creation:

Wickedness was widespread

Every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time

Earth was corrupt - in a ruined and useless state

Creation, itself, was significantly impacted by the sinful condition of man

The Lord’s feelings about the state of affairs:

He regretted having made man

He was deeply grieved, or literally, heartbroken over the current state

God chose one man and his family to spare from the judgment, Noah. Genesis 6:9 “9 These are the family records of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among his contemporaries; Noah walked with God.”

Noah was a righteous man

Noah was blameless

He walked with God

He was a man of faith

Faith to believe God that a flood was coming

Faith to act on building the ark

Faith to trust God to see him and his family safely through

Elements that tie the ark and flood to the salvation offered in Christ

The ark was a plan born of God and not invented by humans - God is the architect

The ark is made of gopher wood which correlates to the humanity of Christ.

The ark is covered in pitch both inside and out. Pitch is a symbol of atonement.

The purpose of the ark was to save Noah, his family and the animals from the pronounced judgement

The salvation of God comes through an act of faith and obedience:

Noah believed

Noah had to build

Noah had to get on the ark

God is longsuffering with man - let’s not forget how long God took before the judgment was carried out

Noah is a type of Christ in this account. He is, with God’s help of course, a deliverer of mankind. God will establish a new covenant with him and essentially re-create through Noah and his family. Much like Christ delivers a new creation in us as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”

In order to have the new creation, what had to happen for the old creation? Was judgement pronounced on the old? What is the destiny for the old creation?

Let’s hold those thoughts as we look into chapter 8 of Genesis and see The New Creation brought about in this account.

The New Creation Established

Read Gen. 8:1-14

Genesis 8:1–14 (CSB)

1 God remembered Noah, as well as all the wildlife and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water began to subside. 2 The sources of the watery depths and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky stopped. 3 The water steadily receded from the earth, and by the end of 150 days the water had decreased significantly. 4 The ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.

5 The water continued to recede until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible. 6 After forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made, 7 and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see whether the water on the earth’s surface had gone down, 9 but the dove found no resting place for its foot. It returned to him in the ark because water covered the surface of the whole earth. He reached out and brought it into the ark to himself. 10 So Noah waited seven more days and sent out the dove from the ark again. 11 When the dove came to him at evening, there was a plucked olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water on the earth’s surface had gone down. 12 After he had waited another seven days, he sent out the dove, but it did not return to him again. 13 In the six hundred first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water that had covered the earth was dried up. Then Noah removed the ark’s cover and saw that the surface of the ground was drying. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry.

Had God forgotten about Noah? What do you think the use of the word “remember” is trying to convey? The Hebrew word means to recall information or events, with a focus on responding in appropriate manner. The same word is used in Exodus 6:5“5 Furthermore, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are forcing to work as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.” God is going to respond on Noah’s behalf with intent and in an appropriate way. What needed to happen? The water needed to stop and it needed to recede.

After God stops the water from rising, what does He do to get the waters to recede? He causes a wind to pass over the earth. This is a very interesting picture. First of all, look back at Genesis 1:2 “2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” Who was hovering over the watery depths? The Spirit of God. The same Hebrew word used for Spirit of God, ruach, is used for wind here. The affects of God’s judgement is complete - everything that had the breath (ruach) of life in them had been destroyed except for Noah, his family and the animals in the ark.

This wind’s purpose was to bring an end to God’s judgement to establish the new creation. For purposes of God’s plan of salvation and the new creation Paul spoke about what is the Spirit’s purpose?

He convicts us of our sin

He indwells us

He seals us

Is it any reason that the imagery depicted in Acts 2 when the disciples received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was the sound of mighty rushing wind?

Noah tests the environment by sending out the raven and three doves showed that he was taking the necessary precautions and processes in order to disembark the ark. Noah being a man of faith doesn’t demonstrate any lack of faith with his testing. Rather, he exemplified for hundreds of years that Noah walked by faith. What he does show us here is that we all must exercise our faith when it comes to walking in the newness of life - we have to come out of the ark.

The New Creation Entered

Read Gen. 8:15-22

Genesis 8:15–22 (CSB)

15 Then God spoke to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 17 Bring out all the living creatures that are with you—birds, livestock, those that crawl on the earth—and they will spread over the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” 18 So Noah, along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, came out. 19 All the animals, all the creatures that crawl, and all the flying creatures—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark by their families.

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, he said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.

22 As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,

summer and winter, and day and night

will not cease.”

God tells Noah to come out of the ark. Interestingly, the word for come here means captive. Truly, he and his family have been captive in the ark for over a year. This word depicts one who was captive coming out of exile…so, there is movement or a transition of locations. It is not too dissimilar to when Jesus commands, Lazarus in John 11:43 “43 After he said this, he shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!””

How does this relate, then, to what Christ has done in us to give us the newness of life?

What does Noah do after they come out? How did the Lord respond?

In verse 21, the word for curse here is different than the word used in Genesis 3:17 “17 And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’: The ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life.”

The Gen. 3:17 passage, God places a curse on the ground. The ground has been significantly impacted (or cursed) by what it went through in the flood. And as we will see in Genesis 9:11 “11 I establish my covenant with you that never again will every creature be wiped out by floodwaters; there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.”” , God’s promise will forego any such judgement in the future.

However, there are impacts that occurred to nature and to mankind following the flood:

Length of life was decreased

The oceans became more expansive the amount of habitable land was decreased

There is a greater variation in the climate

The crust of the earth was now unstable and subject to seismic activity

Hurricanes, tornadoes and thunderstorms would now buffet the earth as creation longs for the day it will be liberated as well. Romans 8:21 “21 that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children.”

Just like Noah, we can place our life and soul in the ark of Christ and be delivered by the Spirit to a new creation; but until we leave this world and go to be with Christ, we will still be impacted and affected by the curse delivered in Gen. 3 and a life of decay and death.