The Flood

: 6-

Genesis 6:6–8 ESV

And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 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.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We continue our study of the texts of the Great Vigil of Easter with the Flood, and Noah’s deliverance on the Ark.

The Reason

Ever since the creation of man, the Fall into sin made its claim on human kind. Sin had entered the world and made its destructive appearance known in the total depravity of mankind. The Scriptures are not clear about exactly what this depravity is; suffice it to say that anytime that mankind decides to live as if God did not exist or matter, and that man becomes his own God.

This angers God to the point that He “grieves” that He had made man, and leads Him to wipe mankind off of the earth. The world needed to be “rebooted.” But there was one who found favor in God’s eyes: Noah and his family, “eight souls in all.”

And so God prepares Noah and his family for what was about to take place. He commands Noah to build an ark, and gives Noah exacting directions as to both material and size of this ark. Noah and his family would be kept safe on the ark. And God would preserve His creation by bringing all of the types of animals and all of the types of available food onto the ark with Noah.

Notice that it is not just two of every animal that God commands Moses to take on the ark. it is seven pairs of clean animals, male and female to “keep thei various kinds alive.

Noah complies.

The Great Flood

The flood begins. It rains for forty days and forty nights. And the wellsprings of the earth burst open from below. The Scripture tells us that the waters rose to what amounts to 20 feet above the highest mountain. All life left on earth was wiped off of the map.

By the way, Jesus makes reference to this when He says “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man..... One will be taken, one will be left. Common Dispensational theology holds that those taken were the ones on the ark, the ones going to heaven; the ones left were the ones left to drown. Except that’s not what it is saying: It’s directly opposite. Noah and His family were LEFT on the earth; Those taken were taken in the tide of death.

There are some who doubt that the Great Flood ever occurred. They hold it to be mythical and not literal. However, that is short sighted. Science truly proves the existence of a great worldwide flood. For instance, dinosaur bones are found entombed in various strata in places like the Grand Canyon. How could this be without a flood? And almost every scientist holds that there was an “ice age” on earth. To have ice, you have to have water. It was the flood that brought the water. If you’d like to research this more, look up Ken Ham and the Creation Institute. He has page after page of scientific information.

The point of the Flood is God wiping out the wicked.

The Ark

Noah, his family and the pairs of all of the animals float on the water. The flood does not take them; it leaves them.

As the flood ends and the water recedes the ark comes to rest on Mount Ararat. Noah releases a raven that flits back and forth but finds no where to land. He then sends out a dove, and it returned. Seven days later, he releases the dove again, it brought back a “freshly plucked” olive leaf. The water was receding, and plant life was springing up once again. After seven more days Noah sent out the dove and it did not return.

Noah then opens the ark and saw the dry surface of the ground was dry. At that point Noah makes an altar to the Lord and worships Him there for his salvation. He took some of the clean animals and clean birds and sacrificed them to the Lord.

The Promise

The Lord makes a promise.

:

Genesis 8:21–22 ESV

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

As with Adam and Eve, God commands Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply. And then the Lord places a rainbow in the sky as a sign of the covenant:

: 11-

Genesis 8:11–17 ESV

And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore. In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out. Then God said to Noah, “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

God delivers Noah.

Peter makes reference to this:

: 18-

1 Peter 3:18–22 ESV

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Two very interesting points about this text.

First

The Greek reads o kai umaV antitupon nun swzei Baptisma

literal, “and you (the) antitype now saves you, Baptism”

Translated, “Baptism is the fulfillment of the flood that now saves you.”

The flood is a prophecy of Baptism. Baptism is the antitype, or fulfillment of the flood.

And what does the flood do? Just as with Pharaoh’s host, it drowns the wicked and delivers the righteous.

Second

When we read the exact phrase we see that Noah and his family is not delivered from the flood; They are delivered by the flood! They were saved THROUGH water, not FROM Water.

Baptism, once again is fulfilled by this!

Romans 6:3 ESV

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Romans 6:8 ESV

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

“The forces of the deep joined forces with the rain, the ark upon the water rose the evil world was slain.

Flood can take on two senses here.

First, as Peter tells us, the flood is Baptism. God’s washing of regeneration through the Word that spilt on us and made us His own. It drowns out our sin, and brings us out into the promised land of the Kingdom of God. We are forgiven, made a live, bound into the Body of Christ, the Church, dying to sin and rising to righteousness. By it we are marked with the holy cross and sealed with the Holy Spirit forever.

Second, the flood can also be seen allegorically as the flood of sin and death that should snuff out our life. But through Baptism, God puts us on the Ark— His Church, where we are saved through the Flood of Baptism. One of the symbols of the Church is the “Ark of God.” That’s why we call the place where you sit the “Nave” as in “Navy.” Last week we sang:

In a watery grave are buried all the sins that Jesus carried; Christ, the Ark of Life has ferried us across death’s raging flood.

God delivers His people FROM the water WITH the Water.

Plunged in these depths sin’s stranglehold on Adam’s children die, with Pharaoh’s host and Noah’s world beneath the water lie.

We need to be in that Ark. The flood is all around us. God gave a covenant that he would never destroy the earth again with water. But He never said that He wouldn’t destroy the earth again:

2 Peter 3:

2 Peter 3:10–13 ESV

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Those on the ark are safe. It is the Church. And through the Flood you are in the Ark.