2 lessons from Genesis 8

Genesis 8 shows Noah still in the ark and water is not just over his head, it is over the mountains. It takes a long time for the waters to start to recede from the earth and one might wonder what would happen to Noah during that time. A wonderful thing did happen:

God remembered Noah

Oh, to be remembered by God. If you have every had a friend who forgot about you, you can understand the pain of that loss, especially if they were a good friend, or perhaps even “more than friends.”

God knows all of us but it is the remembering that indicates a care and concern for us which Noah received in Genesis 8.

Genesis 8:1 ESV  But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.

Of course, God was also concerned about the beasts and livestock too. Still, as Jesus will teach in Matthew 6, while God does take care of them,”we” are of greater value. God will take care of us.

Matthew 6:26 ESV  Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

A more important question is “Do we remember God?”

God makes a covenant

At the end of the chapter God makes a covenant with Noah:

Genesis 8:22 ESV  While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

This should be of great comfort to us because we know that, although the world will end someday, it will not end before God is ready to end it.

When I was growing up, among the big fears was Nuclear war. Post Nuclear  war movies like Planet of the Apes, Damnation Alley, etc spoke of the horrors of the world “ending” with a Nuclear war. (Not that it actually “ended” it was just very hard living.) Even today movies show the world ending in terrible ways.

What God said, and I believe, is that the world will end when GOD says it ends and until then, we will still have seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night!

This is not to say that we should be care free with how we use the resources God gave us in our world but neither should we be overly concerned when those that do not honor God do things to that appear to destroy the world as if they will actually succeed!

Three things have been “end of the world calamities” in my life: Nuclear war, Global cooling, and Global warming. So far none of it has stopped seed time, harvest, heat, cold, summer, winter, day, or night! So do not be anxious, God is in control. In the end, we will all die so we need to live to God and be sure we are going to be in Heaven with Him.

2 things we can learn from Genesis 7

Noah also takes center stage in chapter 7. There are 2 things to learn from this chapter. One corrects a childhood lesson and the other teaches us a very important lesson.

NOT two of every kind of animal

If you grew up like I did, you think that Noah had two of each kind of animal. It is an easy way to remember the lesson without over complicated it for a small child but for an older child or adult, the text reveals something else. Gen 7:2

Genesis 7:2 ESV  Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate…

It was 2 pair for the unclean but 7 for the clean. Otherwise, what happened to the animals Noah sacrificed in chapter 8? (Some of you are thinking: Oh , that is what happened to the Unicorns!) No!

Genesis 8:20 ESV  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.

 

Now they did go in 2 by 2 but somehow every picture shows 2 giraffe, 2 hippos, 2 lions, etc. When we read the text we can understand the actual count of animals.

Only 8 persons were saved in the ark.

How sad it is to see that Noah, a preacher of righteousness, had to enter the ark with only his wife, sons and daughter in laws. 8 total people saved from the flood.

Genesis 7:7 ESV  And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood.

 

The lesson to be learned from this is that the world was so bad (Gen 6:5) that Noah had no success in convincing them that a flood was coming. This is one passage that reminds us that few people will be saved. In the midst of a lot of teaching which states that “everyone will be saved, ” we need to take note that same God who wants to save everyone, let everyone else drown.

God is not inconsistent. Repentance and Faith in him are required to have a relationship with Him. If we do not repent at the preaching of the Gospel today, and enter the ark of safety (known as Jesus), then when the next flood (of fire) comes, we will be caught up in it.