Genesis 8.15-22-God Commands Noah to Leave the Ark
Tuesday September 27, 2005
Genesis: Genesis 8:15-22-God Commands Noah to Leave the Ark
Lesson # 34
Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis 8:15.
This evening we will study Genesis 8:15-22, which records God commanding Noah to leave the Ark.
Noah, his family and the animals were in the Ark a total of one year and seventeen days.
The earth was “not” completely annihilated by the Flood but rather it was drastically changed.
There were many physical changes upon the earth after the Flood:
(1) The oceans were much more vast since they now contained all the waters, which once formed the vast transparent water vapor canopy above the earth’s atmosphere.
(2) The land areas were not as vast as they were prior to the Flood with a much greater portion of the earth’s surface uninhabitable for this reason.
(3) The vast transparent water vapor canopy above the earth’s atmosphere had dissipated so that strong temperature differentials were inaugurated leading to a gradual build up of snow and ice in the polar latitudes rendering much of the extreme north and southern land surfaces also essentially uninhabitable.
(4) Mountain ranges rose up after the Flood emphasizing the more rugged topography of the postdiluvian continents with many of these regions also becoming unfit for humans.
(5) Winds, storms, rains and snows were possible now, thus rendering the total environment less congenial to man and animals than had once been the case prior to the Flood.
(6) The environment was much more hostile because of harmful radiation from outer space, which was no longer filtered out by the vast transparent water vapor canopy above the earth’s atmosphere resulting in the gradual reduction in length of human life after the Flood.
Genesis 8:15-16, “Then God spoke to Noah, saying, ‘Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you.’”
Genesis 8:17, “Bring out with you every living thing (chayyah, “wild or non-domestic animals”) of all flesh that is with you, birds and animals (behemah, “domestic animals”) and every creeping thing (remes, “creepers-crawlers” referring to insects, small reptiles, most amphibians and small mammals or in other words, every animal with the exception of the larger domestic and non-domestic animals) that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”
Genesis 8:18, “So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him.”
Genesis 8:19, “Every beast (chayyah, “wild or non-domestic animals”), every creeping thing (remes, “creepers-crawlers” referring to insects, small reptiles, most amphibians and small mammals or in other words, every animal with the exception of the larger domestic and non-domestic animals), and every bird, everything that moves (ramas: referring to living creatures in general that crawl upon the earth) on the earth, went out by their families from the ark.”
Notice that Noah did not immediately leave the Ark when the earth was dry but instead waited until God commanded him to leave the Ark, thus, demonstrating Noah’s implicit trust or faith in the Lord expressed by his obedience.
Noah’ obedience to the Lord demonstrated not only his faith but also his love for the Lord and that he was experiencing fellowship with the Lord.
John 14:15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”
1 John 2:3, “Now, by means of this, we can confirm that we know Him (the Lord Jesus Christ) experientially: if any of us at any time does observe conscientiously His (the Lord Jesus Christ’s) commands.”
The command to the animals and birds indicates that all the earth’s present dry-land animals are descendants of those that were on the Ark.
Also, all the present tribes and nations of men are descended from Noah’s family, namely, Shem, Ham and Japheth and their wives.
Genesis 8:20, “Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal (behemah, “domestic animals”) and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.”
Noah’s first act after emerging from the Ark was to worship the Lord and was the first recorded instance of a believer building an altar to the Lord.
By building the altar and offering sacrifices to the Lord, Noah responded to the Lord’s love and grace in delivering him from the judgment of the Flood by worshipping Him.
Worship is adoring contemplation of God as He has been revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Person of Christ and in the Scriptures.
It is the loving ascription of praise to God for what He is, both in Himself and in His ways and is the bowing of the soul and spirit in deep humility and reverence before Him.
Psalm 2:11-12, “Worship the LORD with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!”
Psalm 29:2b, “Worship the LORD in holy array.”
Matthew 4:10, “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD, AND SERVE HIM ONLY.’”
John 4:23-24, “But an hour is coming and now is when the true worshippers, will worship the Father spiritually, yes, by means of truth. In fact, the Father intensely desires such worshippers of Him. God, as to His nature, is spirit and those worshipping Him must worship spiritually, yes, by means of truth.’
Noah built the altar in order that he might sacrifice the clean animals, which portrayed the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
A “clean” animal is one that is acceptable to the Lord for sacrificial purposes.
The sacrifice of these clean animals “portrayed” the voluntary substitutionary spiritual death of the impeccable human nature of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 1:18, “knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers.”
1 Peter 1:19, “but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”
The killing of the innocent animal portrayed the fact that the impeccable human nature of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was our “Substitute” meaning He died in our place.
By offering this sacrifice to the Lord, Noah was looking forward in faith to the Cross whereas we in the church age look back at the Cross.
“Burnt offerings” is the noun `olah (hl*u{) (o-law), which portrays “propitiation” with emphasis upon the Finished Work of Christ on the Cross.
“Propitiation” is the Godward side of salvation whereby the voluntary substitutionary spiritual death of the impeccable humanity of Christ in hypostatic union satisfied the righteous demands of a holy God that the sins of the entire world-past, present and future be judged.
1 John 2:2, “Furthermore, He Himself is the propitiation with regards to our sins. In fact, He Himself is the propitiation not with regards to our sins only in contrast with the rest of unregenerate humanity, absolutely not, but also with regards to the entire world, without exception and without distinction.”
1 John 4:10, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
The spiritual death of Christ is recorded in Matthew 27:45-46.
Matthew 27:45-46, “Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?’ that is, ‘MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?’”
Isaiah prophesied of the spiritual death of Christ in the Old Testament.
Isaiah 53:1, “Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?”
Isaiah 53:2, “For He (the Son) grew up before Him (the Father) like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.”
Isaiah 53:3, “He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”
Isaiah 53:4, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.”
Isaiah 53:5, “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:6, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.”
Isaiah 53:7, “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth.”
Isaiah 53:8, “By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?”
Isaiah 53:9, “His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth.”
Isaiah 53:10, “But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.”
Isaiah 53:11, “As a result of the anguish of His (Christ’s) soul, He (the Father) will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.”
“Anguish of His soul” refers to the intense suffering of our Lord’s human soul as a result of being separated from the Father on the Cross and which suffering no angel or man will ever be able to identify with since no angel or man has kept themselves experientially sinless.
The greatest suffering the humanity of Christ endured on the cross was “not” the physical and mental torture of the cross but rather when He received the imputation of the sins of the entire world by the justice of God the Father and was separated from the Father during the last 3 hours on the cross.
Our Lord’s loss of fellowship with His Father in His humanity during those last 3 hours in darkness on the Cross was infinitely more painful to our Lord than the physical suffering He had endured and was enduring.
Our Lord’s loss of fellowship with His Father in His humanity during those last 3 hours in darkness on the Cross was valued infinitely more by the Father than the shedding of His literal blood or His physical suffering since blood is inanimate.
This is not to say that the Father did not value the physical suffering of His Son, or His literal blood, which was sinless, He did, but literal blood though sinless cannot resolve man’s problem of separation from God under real spiritual death.
The separation from God of a perfect human being whose soul was never contaminated by sin was the penalty that had to be paid in order to redeem human souls from the curse of Adam’s sin of disobedience and real spiritual death.
Genesis 8:21, “The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, ‘I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.’”
“Soothing aroma,” indicates God’s satisfaction with the sacrifice of the clean animal, which portrayed the death of Christ (propitiation).
The Lord would “not” accept the animal sacrifice without obedience on the part of the offerer (Jer. 6:20; 7:21ff.).
The Lord accepted Noah’s sacrifice and was pleased with it because Noah was obedient to Him.
Genesis 8:22, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
During the antediluvian period the entire earth was warm all year round, having no storms because of the vast transparent water vapor canopy that was above the earth’s atmosphere but when it precipitated during the flood of Noah, there became “cold and heat, and summer and winter” and the emergence of the North and South Poles.
Genesis 8:21-22 contains the first provision of a new covenant that the Lord is making with Noah.
This covenant that the Lord made with Noah denoted His gracious undertaking for the benefit of Noah and his family and descendants as a result of Noah operating in faith and obeying the Lord by presenting the appropriate offerings on the altar.
The covenant that God made with Noah was “unconditional” meaning it totally and completely depended upon the faithfulness of God.