Genesis 7

Are we willing to say yes to God’s plan even if it’s uncomfortable and longer than we thought? We usually don’t know the length of a particular season in life, or the challenges it will bring, or what it will ultimately produce in and around us.  We may imagine we have a clue but it’s typically short-sighted on our part. 

So... will we receive what God has for us?

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Happy Wednesday to you. I'm so glad that you're here and joining in as we look at the scriptures together. The room that I record these devotionals in has what we refer to as a territorial view. Right up my window, I can see trees mostly, that's about it. But there's one tree in particular. It's significantly sized maple. And the leaves have not budded yet. It's not doing that. But the main portion, the trunk and the main branches are absolutely covered in moss. And on one side, there are ferns kind of growing out of the side of it. It's an older tree, I would imagine. And I can see like the water dripping off of those bare branches, the thinner ones that haven't, you know, produced their leaves yet. I can see the buds even from here, but they're just soaked. And I'm sharing that bit with you to just remind you, in case you happen to be listening from someplace other than the Pacific Northwest, that we know a thing or two about a lot of rain. In fact, in November and December, we had this kind of a season of what they call atmospheric rivers, and it felt like one after another was coming and just dumping day after day after day of rain. And today we're talking about the flood brand, Genesis chapter seven. And sometimes, you know, we'll even make these like little kind of wise cracks about, oh, I saw somebody building an ark because it's raining so much, and everybody knows that we're kidding. But I was thinking about a lot of rain and what that could do and what it does in the context of our story today. Go ahead and open up the scriptures to Genesis chapter seven. We will go ahead and read all of it together, and then we'll make a few kind of observations and talk a little bit more about how it can have some application in our lives here today. But first, let's pray. Jesus, thank you that you are with us, whether the weather is crazy outside or whether it's beautiful. God thank you that you are present in every aspect of our lives. Help us to continue to seek your face with all that we are. Amen. Genesis chapter seven. The Lord then said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made. And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth, and Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark as God had commanded Noah, and after the seven days the flood waters came on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that day all the springs of the deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened, and rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons entered the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all the creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in. For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished. Birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out, people and animals, and the creatures that move along the ground, and the birds that were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. So let's jump into this together, but before we get too far, I wanted to take a moment and recognize that for a lot of people, this is actually one of those stories that causes some faith wrestling. And it feels different. I think maybe it feels different because of the scope of the story, the totality of it. And people legitimately have those questions like, did it actually happen? And did it actually happen in the way it's described? Now the heartbeat of our time together isn't to prove or disprove anything. But I'll let you know that for myself, I do believe that it happened and that the biblical count account is a true representation, even if it isn't detailed out to the point of satisfying our questions about things like ice ages, the topography of the earth, the those sorts of things that we interact with and those things that are legitimate reasons for us to investigate. And so my encouragement to you is to be curious for your own sake, to investigate things and to consider the different theories that are presented out there, and and do that in the context of faith. But for our case, for our situation, we want to continue to move forward. And I'm just letting you know, right, full disclosure, this is the point of view that I'm coming from, that the story is a good representation and that we can see God's hand in the midst of it. So the first kind of observation about the text for myself is Noah's and his families, right? His sons and their wives, Noah's wife, that they have this continued trust in God. They're doing things that hadn't been done. They're believing that God would keep his word, even as harsh as that word was. And we see examples of this in this chapter, uh, verses two, verse 13, verse 16, and verse 23. Uh just a quick example of that. Excuse me, I said verse I said verse two. What I meant was verse five. Verse five says, And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. And then again, on 13, it says, On that very day, Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. Like you can see them, you know, responding and acting on the thing that they believed to be true. And yeah, that theme is there. And we get all the way to the very end, and all of it happens, the catastrophe happens, and we understand that only Noah was left. They're at the last part of verse 23. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the Ark. As we look at this, I'm reminded of what faithfulness sometimes does look like. There isn't always this really, really clear, reasonable plan from our perspective. Sometimes it really just is trusting God and and understanding that his way is different than maybe our way, that his way is is higher, that his understanding is is greater than than ours. The second piece that just really grabs my attention is the violence and the totality of the event itself. And I get it, I understand, you know, like there's the the wiping out and the destruction of life, and that is the primary act of of totality there. But but just the way that it happens. So we see there at the end of verse 11 in verse 12, it says, on that day, on the day that it starts, it says, on that day, all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And I think about you know, the imagery that that evokes. You know, the the great springs of the of the deep bursts forth, and and just all of this activity that was there, and the way that the earth itself must have been kind of convulsing with what was taking place. The floodgates of the heavens were open, just this deluge of of water that that floods everything. Rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. And then finally, for me, there's there's this thing at the very end there, it says that the floodwaters, or the waters rather, flooded the earth for 150 days. That's five months. Five months of time in the ark, five months before they would step outside. Five months, I would imagine, filled with gratitude and probably some cabin fever. You know, five months of like, thank you, God. I'm so glad that we did the thing you asked us to do. Like we're we recognize we're being preserved in this, we're we're being saved. But also, I mean, it doesn't matter how big that boat is, that there's going to be some aspect of being, you know, confined. And five months is a long time. It's a very long time. So five months of gratitude and and some cabin fever. So let's process this maybe for ourselves here. And as we think about this event, obviously it's something that that is is from way back, right? So there's that. But what what does it mean for us? What's the so what of this? And for me, it really is a trust and a faith conversation. Am I willing to say yes to God's plan, even if it's uncomfortable, and even if it's longer than I thought? Like whatever thing is going on in my life, whatever thing I'm asking God to intervene in, am I willing and ready to go his way? You know, did Noah know the length of time that all of this would take, or the bumpy ride and what things would look like when it was all over? The answer is probably not. I mean, we don't know, but probably not. But I believe he did understand God's way was the only way that this was going to work out for him. Now, when we think about Noah's situation, we're like, well, yeah, obviously to leave the ark would have meant death, most likely, right? So that's not a real kind of option for him. But a lot of times for us, we we can have this tendency to understand what God wants for us and and to know, right? Through prayer, through just the way he lays things out for us, that we're we're called to walk in a certain way and to do certain things. But when the going gets rough in those situations, we also have that very human response, which is to kind of back out of it sometimes. Like we want a certain outcome, and God says, okay, I'll I'll provide this for you, but this is the pathway to get there. And we start going down that path, and and it's curvier than we thought, and it's bumpier than we thought, and it's more emotional than we thought, and and it costs us something that we didn't think we maybe would have to give up. And we're like, well, hang on a second, I don't know if I really want this, and we back out of it. And then sometimes we wonder, like, well, God, why didn't you give me the desire of my heart in this? And he said, Well, look, I offered you this, and and you elected to go your own way. Again, we usually don't know the length of a particular season in our lives. We may anticipate it coming, but we don't always understand the challenges it will bring or what it will ultimately produce in and around us. Sometimes we imagine that we have a clue, or we imagine what it might be, but usually that's short-sighted on our part. And so we really kind of come back to this place of will we receive what God has for us? Noah's story certainly is far from done. We have more to go and we'll get to that next week. But as we process these ideas for ourselves and our own relationship with Jesus, will we receive what God has for us? Let me pray. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you for your presence in our lives, thank you for the way that you lead us. God, would you give us the gift of your presence, the gift of connectedness with you today? We ask this in your name. Amen.