The Flood and Covenant with Noah

Recap:

God created in Genesis 1-2. Everything was good and man was very good. He was given rule and reign over everything in the garden.

In Genesis 3, the serpent came in and deceived Adam and Eve into thinking that they could be like God. So they broke God’s command and he broke fellowship with them. They were then kicked out of the garden.

We are going to be in Genesis 6-9, but a lot has happened in between as well. Adam and Eve had children. There were 2 sons that they had, Cain and Abel. And they both sought favor with God through offerings. God announce that Abel’s offering from his flock was acceptable while Cain’s offering of vegetables was not. So Cain, out of anger, killed Abel.

Then, time passes by, and we get to Noah.

Now, when we begin chapter 6, it is easy to get caught up in trying to figure out what this means. We are told that the “sons of God” took as wives the “daughters of men”. We could sit here and tryin to study the original language all day long and try to figure this out. But they have been doing that for hundreds of years, and still can’t come to an agreement on what it means. So we are not going to try to figure it out in the next 30 minutes either. What we do know in the first 8 verses of this chapter is that man become more and more sinful and it grieved God.

Genesis 6:6 “6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”

So God decided to wipe out everything.

Genesis 6:7 “7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.””

Man had become so vile and so evil, that God said it would be a good thing to blot them out from the face of the earth. We see the evil around us today, but I believe that this would have made our world seem like a Utopia. So what was the plan? Kill everyone and start over? Well kind of. But he wasn’t going to go all the way back to creating a new Adam from the dirt. No, he had a man that he would use.

Genesis 6:8 “8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

There was one man who God looked at and knew he could start fresh with, Noah. He was tired of the rampant wickedness, so he looked to one man who he found favor with.

During World War II blackouts in London, every light was ordered to be extinguished at night to avoid bombing targets. Even a single candlelight seen from miles away could give away a city’s position. In the moral darkness of Noah’s generation, his faith was that single light that caught God’s eye.

Key Point: God judges sin through the flood but preserves Noah and his family, showing both His justice and mercy.

What is it about Noah that you think God looked at and knew he was the one?

God saw sin. God saw a man. And God had a plan.

When Genesis 6 continues, God lays this plan out for Noah. The plan is to build an ark(really big boat). Now, the ark was huge. If you have ever been on a cruise ship, it is around half the length of a large cruise ship. It was 450 ft long. That is a football field and a half long. It was 75 ft wide. That is the width of an 8 lane highway and is close to the width of I-85 in most parts. And it was 45 ft tall, which is close to a 5 story building.

So it was a very big boat. But he also gave him instructions on what goes on the boat. God told him the number of animals. I know that as a kid, my mind would always think about how in the world he was able to get all of those animals on the ark. In the instructions, what God tells him is to get the sort of animals and kind of animals. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Noah got quarter horses, appaloosas, clydesdales, and mustangs and put some of each of them on the ark. No, it says of the kind.

What is interesting is the number of clean animals. We have always been taught that there were 2 of each animal on the ark. But there were only 2 of the unclean of each animals. There is a distinction made for clean and unclean animals. And of the clean animals, he was to take 7 pairs of the clean animals. Before the flood ever happens, there seems to be a distinction between what is clean and what is unclean.

Why do you think that he was instructed to take so many clean animals on the ark?

There would have been 2 reasons as to why they would need clean animals as well and more of them than the others.

1 - to eat. They would need to kill and eat some of them. They were on the ark for a very long time and although there were only 8 of them, they would have needed some for food.

2 - worship. Although it is quite some time before we see laws put in place about sacrificing animals to God, there is no reason to think that it did not happen until then. In Genesis 3, God sacrificed and animal as a sin covering. This would have likely been something that was continued by Adam and Eve after their eviction. We see Cain and Abel make offerings to God and the vegetable offering was not sufficient. So an animal would have been needed.

So Noah built the ark, he loaded up all of the animals and birds. And then the flood began.

Genesis 7:11–12 “11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”

That is a lot of rain. And I would guarantee you that it wasn’t a light drizzle. This was heavy, heavy rain for 40 days and 40 nights. This flood was worldwide. This was not a regional event but a global event. 2 Peter 2:5 “5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;” 2 Peter 3:6 “6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.”

The purpose of the flood was to rid the world of unrighteousness. All living creature to die.

I know that this is hard to wrap your mind around. And some would think that the bible does not tell the full truth and exaggerates at times when it comes to telling about events. But this is a historical event that is accounted for by many ancient civilizations. It was told about in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Epic of Atrahasis, it was told about by ancients in Australia, India, China, and the Aztecs even. So this is a global, historic event that was recorded by the entire world. Now, there are differences in these stories. But the general is true that God sent a flood and wiped out all of civilization. So oral tradition, as it continued, took liberties in the different places.

So the flood comes. What happens next? Well it is a long waiting game now. After 150 days, God sent a wind over all the earth and the waters began to subside. He sent out a raven to see if the waters had went down enough. It says that the raven kept flying back and forth because it could not find anywhere to land. Then he sent out a dove. The same thing happened. So he waited 7 more days and let the dove out again. The dove came back with an olive leaf.

So if the flood killed everything on earth, did the plants survive?

The dove finding an olive leaf means that life was coming back. Plants were starting to grow again. Noah decided to wait another 7 days, then he sent the dove back out and the dove did not return. This meant that it was able to keep going and not have to come back.

God has shown justice and wrath over the sinfulness of man. Noah did not see God as some sort of domineering figure who was to be obeyed out of fear. That is what many people may come away with when reading this passage. No, Noah’s first act after the flood subsides and they come off of the ark is to worship.

Genesis 8:20 “20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.”

God saw this act and it even says that he found the aroma of the offerings to be pleasing. When he smelled it, he made a promise with Noah. God promised that he would never wipe the earth again like he did. And he has kept that promise.

Do you know what the sign of this promise is? It is a rainbow. God has given us rainbows as a promise to not wipe out humanity because of rampant sin. Although, it has now been hijacked by people who participate in rampant sin. If you ever get confused though, remember that a true rainbow has 7 colors and the rainbow that has been adopted as a banner for sexual sinfulness has only 6 colors. Remember that when you see images and think about buying things with a rainbow on it.

The rainbow is given to us as a way to remember the promises of God. And we need reminders sometimes.

After a devastating hurricane, many people say the most powerful moment is when the skies finally clear and a rainbow appears. It’s not that the destruction is forgotten — it’s that hope pierces through the devastation. The rainbow doesn’t erase the storm; it reminds us that the storm has an end.

We see this almost hard reset here with the commands that God gives Noah.

Genesis 9:1–4 “1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. 2 The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. 4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”

be fruitful and multiply(same command to Adam)

All of the animals and birds will fear you and be delivered to your hands(have dominion over creation)

What we see here is that Noah is like the new Adam.

So let’s look at this alone and by itself here. If we were to stop right here, how do you think humanity would have played out? Do you think that Noah is the one who would crush the head of the serpent from Genesis 3?

I think we could take this, up to this point, and make an assumption that Noah was the savior. But, when we keep reading, we see that he is not the greater Adam, only a continuance of the first Adam.

Genesis 9:20–21 “20 Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.”

He took the wine and abused it by getting drunk. He was no better than the first Adam. He took a blessing from God and abused it. And because of his sin, he was vulnerable. He laid uncovered where others were able to see his sinfulness.

But the sin didn’t stop with him. Ham, his son, came in and stared at his nakedness. But he didn’t just stop there. Ham went and told his brothers about it. He made Noah’s shame grow and he brought in other people into his own sin.

So Ham was cursed because of it. We must understand that it is very easy for us to drag other people into our sin. As Christians, we need to get ahold of our sinfulness so that we can protect others from being drug into it.

In these chapters in Genesis, we see that sinfulness had become such a vast and widespread problem, that God needed to wipe the earth from it with a flood. He saw that one man and his family would be the vehicle for the human race to continue. Noah was a righteous man, but he was still a sinner who needed the grace of God. God shows us both his wrath and justice through the flood. But he also shows us his grace and mercy and kindness through the sparing of Noah and his family.

Discussion Questions

- What does the flood teach us about God’s holiness and judgment?

- How did God show grace to Noah?

- What does the rainbow symbolize?

- How is the ark a picture of salvation in Christ?