Genesis 8:13-22

Hey, everybody.
It’s good to be with you again here today.
We are finishing out our Thursday this week with Genesis chapter 8.
We’re going to be in verse 13 today.
Hello, friends.
If you are astute and were with us yesterday,
you see that we’re wearing the same clothes.
Michael has explained that, I’m sure,
in the prelude, the first part of the video.
But I am traveling today.
But we are grateful to be able to do this video,
to record this for you.
Grateful that you have joined us as we…
Really,
Michael, in some sense,
finished the Noah story.
It’s not finished because as we move into chapter 9,
we are still looking at the character of Noah and his family.
His family becomes important in a new way in the story,
at least.
But really, in terms of the flood narrative,
there’s a sense in which chapter 8 kind of brings that
to a close.
And so we are getting to kind of the finale of that part of the story.
Yeah, I would say that what follows this,
what we’re going to look at today,
is in many ways kind of like an epilogue.
It’s sort of like an addition to or an addendum that relies upon the characters
that we’ve established earlier.
And it’s going to change and shape the story in a significant way.
But yeah, so today, as we turn our attention here,
we’re going to see many themes here sort of wrapped up.
And I think that’s going to be an interesting turn.
There’s not a lot of biblical characters I can think of
whose story does have a neat sort of kind of arc like Noah’s does,
but then does continue on beyond it.
So there is an interesting kind of nature to what we’re going to look at today.
Yeah, very much so.
And in some ways,
we are looking at the best of Noah’s story.
It gets a little strange.
Noah would love it if it stopped here.
Noah would love it if it stopped here.
Yeah, I think that’s probably fair.
Just a reminder,
if you weren’t with us yesterday,
we saw Noah with the knowledge that the earth had dried up.
And so today, we get what happens in that point.
So verse 13 here, chapter 8,
“In the 600 first year in the first month and the first day of the month,
the waters were dry from the earth.
And Noah removed the covering of the ark,
and looked and saw that the face of the ground was drying.
In the second month,
on the 27th day of the month,
the earth was dry.
Then God said to Noah,
‘Go out of the ark,
you, your wife, your sons and your sons’ wives with you.
Bring out with you every living thing that was with you
all the flesh, the birds, the animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth,
so that they may abound on the earth
and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.’
So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives,
and every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird,
everything that moves on the earth
went out of the ark
by families.”
This scene, I think, has captured our attention.
I actually have seen dozens,
in fact, of the most
common depictions of Noah and this story,
in my experience, have been the leaving of the ark.
Yes, there is some artwork where you see the ship on the water,
but by and large,
when you see artwork of the Noah story,
it is this scene.
It’s animals marching out of the ark.
It’s the idea of promise.
It’s the idea of new beginning.
We said this yesterday.
When things repeat in Genesis,
it matters.
And so what do we hear today?
Go out,
be fruitful,
and multiply.
This is the re-creation of the call.
This is the re-statement of the call given at the creation story.
Be fruitful and multiply.
This is part two of that ongoing story,
and Noah and his wives and his sons make their way from the ark with the animals
in this kind of new beginning.
And not to overdo this,
but the Scripture tries to help us in a subtle way
get this idea of the beginning.
Look at the first verse, verse 13,
the 600 and first year,
first month,
first day of the month.
This is new year.
This is new beginning.
Everything in this story,
Michael, is about a brand new start.
It is also maybe strange to us how much this story relies upon
this common idea of liturgical seasons.
So you point this out, Clint, 600,
first year, first month, first day of the month.
Biblical scholars will point out that this may be a connection to Exodus
and when the tabernacle is instituted,
that this too was a new mark,
a new day, a new beginning in the worshipping life of Israel.
And these things aren’t accidental.
The ancient world had an emphasis upon times and seasons and rhythms of life
that in many ways we’ve lost as modern people.
And I don’t mean that to just be nostalgic.
I mean to say they understood and cared about the stars
and about the movements and orbits of planets,
not just because that was interesting work,
but because it was instrumental in their life.
Because when you don’t have an electric light
and you’re sitting in a dark world,
these are the things that you see.
And the rhythm of new seasons,
of changes of weather
and all of those kinds of things had a daily impact
that we might struggle to understand.
The point I’m making here is the fact that this is situated within these dates
is not an accident.
It’s because these people lived this story whenever there was a new day.
When spring came back around,
that was a visible reminder
of the God who was faithful to Noah.
And it connected you to a family that was far beyond your own.
And so these stories are
catechetical, would be the theological word, probably more practically,
they’re family stories.
They’re stories that teach you about who you’re a part of
and the traditions that matter to those people.
And it gives you some explanation for why these new seasons do matter.
And in this case it’s because God is faithful to us as a people,
to the writers of this, the nation Israel,
God has been faithful.
And we know that because of great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Noah
who God was faithful to.
And in new seasons God does new things, new creation,
and this is good news.
Absolutely.
And it bears saying, though, I think this is something intellectually we know,
but maybe instinctively we don’t.
This is not our calendar.
This isn’t January 1st as if
we know, the dates here are strange
and the calendar of the Hebrews is difficult
and the calendar in general of the ancient world is very hard to discern.
But this language of newness,
first day, first month,
that matters to the people.
We’re going to see that even more clearly in a moment as we look in the aftermath of the story.
But here we have the completion.
God had promised to deliver Noah and his people and each of the animals
in all of their classes,
all of their species,
to this new beginning.
And God has done that.
And now,
really for the first time,
we see Noah’s response.
Noah has been faithful.
Noah has done what God said.
But as we finish this chapter,
we see Noah responding to his experience.
So let me read this briefly starting with verse 20.
“Then Noah built an altar to the Lord
and took of every clean animal and every clean bird
and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor,
the Lord said in his heart,
‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind,
for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.
Nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I’ve done.
As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
shall not cease.'”
A couple of interesting things here.
So
Noah,
who last built the ark,
now builds an altar
and offers a sacrifice.
This is the paradigm of the rest of the Old Testament.
Ironically enough, the distinction between clean and unclean animal
doesn’t come in the context of the Bible for not only chapters,
but for books here.
I mean, it’s way down the road.
We’re talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years
before the story will tell us the distinction between clean and unclean.
But as they told the Noah story,
it was important that he sacrificed of the clean animals.
We saw that prefigured when they told us that he put extra clean animals in.
Why are there no creeping things on the altar?
Because they don’t belong there.
They’re not clean.
There are only birds and land animals.
And the Lord smelled the odor,
and then this is,
again, the wonderful part of the story.
The Lord said in his heart,
“When is the last time we had the heart of God referred to
when it was grieved by the sinfulness of humankind?”
And so here God says,
“I will not do this again.”
And to your point a minute ago, Michael,
while we don’t have dates given,
in an agricultural society,
here are the seasons.
Verse 22,
“Seed time,
harvest,
cold,
and heat.” This is the cyclical nature of life when you live in the ancient world,
when it’s time to plant,
when it’s time to harvest,
when it’s cold, when it’s hot.
These are the rhythms that the people know.
And as God refers to the creation,
and it’s enduring,
at least in the sense that He won’t destroy it again,
He uses those to kind of unfold that idea of the recurring seasons of human experience.
Yeah, and it is interesting.
It’s very clear in my Bible here,
my digital Bible, because I’ve highlighted this,
the yellow section.
This has always stuck out to me, Clint,
this little…
Really, it’s just a small inclusion here,
“For the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.”
This is one of the first times that we’ve really had a propositional statement
quite like this in the book of Genesis.
It’s in many ways like
a moment where an author makes an aside.
If you were in a play,
the main character might come to the front of the stage
and the lights will dim and you have a spotlight,
so it’s a very intimate kind of turn.
This is how I imagine this.
And we hear this small lesson,
this sort of deep human truth,
this distilling of wisdom,
and it is this simple thing that the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.
This is really the
scripture’s way of describing what we theologically call original sin,
and this has been teased out historically in lots of different ways
through different traditions of the faith.
But what’s relevant to our conversation today is just this moment of
admitting that God has said that this destruction and judgment was necessary
and that God also recognizes
that the human heart has been transformed.
It’s been marked by sin in a way that is even marked at birth.
So therefore,
when God makes this accommodation,
this promise,
this covenant with Noah,
that God’s not going to destroy the earth again,
it’s not because of human ability or because the humans are going to be able to fix the problem.
This is because of God’s willing to bear the weight of the judgment and pain and suffering that humans have created.
And so it’s interesting to me theologically because of that recognition
that there’s something deeply wrong at the heart of humans from birth.
But it’s also interesting because I think it’s an admission by the biblical author
that in the promise-keeping business,
God is the one who keeps it.
Humans are the one who are destined to break it.
And that’s a kind of honest and in some ways
difficult statement to be made
because, you know, in a culture in which sacrifices and alter-keeping
was a significant part of the worship and understanding of one’s worshiping life,
this is a big confession that it can’t be done perfectly.
There’s a very interesting foreshadowing,
I think, that takes place here, Michael,
in that God gives us a hint that this event,
this cataclysmic thing that has happened,
has not fixed the problem,
that it’s not as if in the aftermath of the flood,
now the evil of the human heart has gone away
and Noah and his people are going to produce righteous descendants from here on out.
But what God says is,
“I’m not going to let this become the cycle
in which wickedness grows and I destroy the earth.
There’s not going to be that kind of treadmill.
That’s not what I’m going to do.” And remember,
I think we could assume that God never hinted that this would fix the problem.
This was never presented as a solution.
This was presented as taking care of a righteous person
in the midst of punishing sin.
And that really becomes the tension inherent in the rest of Genesis and in the rest of Scripture.
What is the balance between God recognizing and even rewarding righteousness
and punishing sinfulness?
These are the two poles between which the rest of the story of human life is going to be told.
And I think it does that in a really subtle but really interesting way here.
This is kind of a foreshadowing that I think is really important.
Yeah, I agree completely, Clint.
I don’t want to dig in here too long.
But this is Genesis chapter 6,
so we’re jumping back a couple chapters to the beginning of the story.
And look at this wording to your point.
Verse 12,
“God saw that the earth was corrupt,
for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.
And critically,
God said to Noah,
‘I’ve determined to make an end of all flesh for or because the earth is filled with violence because of them,
and now I’m going to destroy them along with the earth.'”
I want to just pause here and make note of how unsatisfying that may be to our human questions, right?
Because we want to ask the question to your point,
Clint. Like,
God, why don’t you—is this you judging them?
Is this you bringing their just desserts?
Is this you wiping them out for a fresh start?
We would love to answer the question, God, why?
Why are you doing this?
But this story
is not really interested in discerning the will of God.
It is about a just and righteous
creator recreating
because of the depth of human depravity.
That’s it.
That’s all that we’re told.
That’s all that we’re let in on.
And that is in many ways unsatisfying,
but I would connect this all the way back to today’s text.
It’s unsatisfying to us for the very same reason that Adam and Eve were unsatisfied with the arrangement with the garden,
is because that question,
well, we want to know the answer,
eternal creator God.
And God,
much like the conversation with Job says,
that’s not—you don’t need to know that.
That’s beyond your station as created one.
That is an uncomfortable place to be.
I mean, Clint, it’s just none of us are going to rest incredibly easy with the reality that there are some things that are undiscernable.
And yet, in the midst of this moment,
I think that we recognize that there is some blessing in living in that mystery,
because in reality, we’re not God’s judge.
We’re merely seeing a God who we can rejoice that he was faithful to Noah,
and therefore to all the nations who would follow.
And that’s in many ways the point of this story,
even if it does leave us unsatisfied in some ways.
It’s always tempting to focus and be more interested in what is lost than what is saved.
It is, I think,
far easier to
have questions about why things are destroyed rather than why things are rescued.
The story approaches that from exactly the opposite perspective.
The point of this tale is that God saved Noah,
and that’s really what it’s trying to tell us.
And as we pick up the sort of last,
the expanded—you’ve seen this throughout our flood narrative there—we get the short version of it,
then the expanded version.
As we go through the expanded version of this conclusion Monday when we meet,
I think that we really get a chance to see the story focus on the promise of
what this deliverance means,
not only for Noah,
but for humankind to come.
Yeah, so that’s exactly what I was going to say.
I was going to say we don’t have time for it today,
and I don’t think it’s the right moment.
But I do hope you join us as we begin to tie up some of the Noah themes next week,
because this is a story that may not seem relatable.
It may not seem immediately applicable.
If you open your Bible looking for God,
what’s your wisdom and truth for me today?
Noah’s story may not meet that need.
But if you’re willing to open this story and ask God,
“Where am I in this story?
What does it have to teach me about your faithfulness?”
We have some really powerful things to come,
so I hope you’ll join us for that.
Yeah, thank you for listening.
Please continue with us if you can.
We’re grateful.
If you’ve got questions,
as always, let us know.
We’d love to try and answer whatever we can,
and we just appreciate your time.
Thanks for being with us.
Have a great weekend.
See you for worship on Sunday at 8.50,
wherever you’re watching this video.
And then we will see you on Monday at 2 o’clock central to continue our study.
Thanks so much.