Hey everybody,
it’s good to be with you
as we kick off another week
and we jump into the seventh chapter of Genesis.
Yeah, welcome back on Monday.
We continue through the flood narrative here
and right away as we enter chapter seven,
we get a chance to kind of see
some of the complexities of this story.
So chapter seven, verse one.
The Lord said to Noah,
go into the ark you and all your household,
for I’ve seen you alone are righteous
before me in this generation.
Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals,
the male and its mate,
and a pair of animals that are not clean,
a male and its mate,
and seven pairs of the birds of the air, male and female,
to keep their kind alive on the face of the earth.
For seven days I will send rain on the earth.
For 40 days and 40 nights,
and every living thing that I have made,
I will blot out
from the face of the ground.
And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.
So we see here essentially a retelling.
We’ve been saying last week,
you heard us say maybe even the week before,
that as we come to the Noah stories,
we really have two streams of stories
that have been edited into one more seamless narrative.
And if you read this,
you’ll see that this is essentially where we’ve been.
Take animals,
go into the ark,
the Lord did as Noah commanded.
We’ve seen that before.
Here we see that this stream of the story
has anticipated a question,
or at least is more favorable
to the kind of priestly interpretation.
In other words,
well,
later on the story,
we get told that Noah made sacrifices.
Well, where did those animals come from?
Here, we have a sensitivity to that sacrificial system
that isn’t in place yet,
but is part of the narrative of the Israelite tradition.
Take seven pairs of clean animals
and one pair of other animals.
So the clean animals exist
both for the proliferation of that species,
but primarily so, Noah is able to offer sacrifice
without decimating a species.
Yeah, it’s interesting how when this story is told,
it includes different emphasis.
And here we clearly have a sacrificial worship
kind of emphasis being brought into the narrative.
And it really,
it’s interesting in that it shows us a different vantage
that God has accommodated even the worshiping life
of this family that’s gonna be saved.
And ultimately that worshiping life
is going to be fleshed out,
is gonna be detailed specifically in the Levitical codes,
the different sacramental atonement type language
that we’re gonna have later in the Old Testament.
But then what I think is striking
and the reason why the ancient writers
and authors and editors of our scriptures
are so wise I think is because
ultimately they see these emphasis
as complimentary and not contradictory.
Because look here in verse five,
let me throw this up for you, verse five.
Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.
Let’s just jump back here,
a couple of verses to where we ended.
This is verse 22 of chapter six.
Noah did this, he did all that God had commanded him.
My point being here just pretty simply that ultimately,
yes, we have a different
vantage perspective.
This one has a little bit more vantage
towards the clean and unclean,
but we land in the same place.
Ultimately,
Noah was faithful to do what God called him to do.
Right, and we see here,
I think it would be wrong,
I think it would be unfortunate to think of these
as somehow competing narratives.
These aren’t
different stories.
These are different details within the same story.
And the telling of this story brings them together
in a really good way that focuses on
God’s provision,
God’s protection,
and Noah’s faithfulness.
These are the hallmarks of the story.
And as we’ve seen again,
when the language changes from God to Lord,
we generally know that we’re dealing with
one or the other of the narrators,
the ones who have passed this story along,
but they have been put together in a way
that I think makes them work.
So we continue here, verse six.
Noah was 600 years old when the flood waters
came upon the earth.
And Noah with his sons and wives,
and his sons wives went into the ark
to escape the waters of the flood,
of clean animals and of animals that are not clean,
and of birds and everything that creeps on the ground,
two and two, male and female,
went in with him.
And as God commanded Noah,
then after seven days,
the waters of the flood came upon the earth.
So you’ll notice lots of sevens in this story.
Seven is a kind of sacred number in Genesis certainly,
but really throughout all of scripture,
it’s a number that represents completeness,
a fullness of plan,
a complete time period.
We see this in the seven day creation cycle.
And so when you see the number seven,
it usually has to do with the kind of divine timing,
that it is the right time.
So here we get seven days after the waters come up.
Noah,
the stage is set,
they’re in the ark,
the animals, the people,
and the flood arrives.
Yeah, so what is striking about this story
is ultimately the details included,
and therefore on the flip side,
the details not included.
And once again, we mentioned this last week,
I think it bears repeating.
Here we have this really interesting thing being teased out.
We have the clean animals and the unclean animals
that God has still made provision for,
by the way.
God is still gracious,
even in the midst of this.
And we have the account Noah’s wife,
sons, and their wives, they’re all in the ark, right?
But ultimately,
there’s really no detail
about those who are not in the ark,
or those people who are coming to scoff Noah.
How many Noah stories have we seen illustrated
emphasizing all of the people mocking him?
Just this imagination that we have
of how hard that must have been.
The biblical authors really have no time to waste
teasing out other characters and their feelings or motivations.
What is clear in this text is God has spoken clearly,
what is to be done,
God has made that plan,
and Noah has been faithful to do it.
Noah has done the thing that has been asked of him,
and that is a visible sign of faith.
And this is a kind of Old Testament understanding
of faithfulness that I think we sometimes lose track of.
We have emphasized faith and grace,
which as we should,
that that is absolutely essential
to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But we sometimes, I do think, miss the force of a text like this,
where it all boils down to,
do you do the thing that God calls you to do?
And here,
Noah’s doing it.
Seven days,
the water’s gonna come up,
and now we’re about to have the flood
covering the earth for a long,
determined period of time.
So then we move into, again,
the kind of next way of hearing that, verse 11.
“In the 600th year of Noah’s life,
in the second month,
on the 17th day of the month,
that all the fountains of the great deep burst forth,
and the windows of the heaven were opened.
The rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights.
On the very same day,
Noah with his son,
Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of the sons, entered the ark.
They,
and every wild animal of every kind,
and all domestic animals of every kind,
and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth,
and every kind of every bird of every kind,
every bird, every winged creature,
they went into the ark with Noah two and two,
of all flesh in which there was the breath of life.
And those that entered,
male and female of all flesh,
went in as God had commanded him,
and the Lord shut him in.”
If you’ve been with us through the first part of Genesis,
you will notice that this story has the same feel
of that first chapter.
The language is the same.
We get God referred to as God,
as Elohim, and that’s a connection.
But here it’s a very ordered story.
It’s a more detailed story.
Here we get this detail,
as we did in the early part of Genesis,
where God separated water from water and built a dome.
Here we have windows in that dome.
This is a literal picture being drawn here.
We have windows in that dome being opened
that are allowing the waters to come through
and flood the earth.
And here we have,
as we did in that story,
this really subtle but very beautiful picture
of God caring for the people.
And we get that in this last detail
that they go into the ark and God shut them in.
We have it recorded as God’s action that closes the door,
providing a sense of protection,
security,
providence.
God is with them.
God is protecting them.
They are not saved by the ark,
per se, but by the actions of the God who is with them in it.
Yeah, we sometimes fail to see
how important the ordering and providential plan of God is.
It is both implicit and explicit throughout the Old Testament.
It’s certainly true here.
Another thing that harkens back to pull up
to that first chapter, Clint,
I’m looking at verse 15 here,
“Two and two of all flesh
“in which there was the breath of life.”
What is God put into the creation that animates it?
Nothing other than the breath of God.
Remember, God spoke and things came into being.
God’s breath,
God’s ruach continues to be the thing
that enlivens this creation.
Even, by the way,
in the very midst
of that creation being reset.
So even in the midst of destruction,
there’s order, there’s creation, that God is somehow,
even in the midst of resetting this thing
that has gone awry,
God is, by God’s providential ability, able to rule,
to overrule,
and therefore bend that thing towards a constructive end
when it was on its own heading in a destructive way.
And that’s exactly what we’re to take,
make from this idea of both the male
and the female of all flesh.
Once again,
God has a hierarchical order,
an intended way that the creation should function.
And the human sin,
which is dominating society,
this thing that had gotten in the way,
it can only be reordered in the way
that God had divinely intended if this flood happens.
And so once again,
I just wanna point out,
not to be a little bit of a broken record,
that fundamentally,
once again, the thing that we might be interested
in asking of this text is,
yeah, but God, what about all of these other people?
This text is less interested in those outside the ark
than the demonstration of God’s providence
and God’s grace in the recreating act
for those inside the ark.
In other words, it’s about God’s faithfulness
to this one who God has determined to be faithful.
The question of the others,
it’s not that it’s unimportant,
certainly the question that we would bring,
it’s not the question that this text is set out to answer.
With very, very few exceptions in scripture,
the focus,
if you want to look at the dial of the focus
of the stories of the Bible,
they are on who God saves
and God’s actions in saving them.
That will be true of Israel,
that will be true of Judah,
that will be true in the New Testament
and it’s certainly true here.
Michael, maybe just one final word.
The book of Genesis,
particularly these ancient parts,
this prehistory narrative is interesting
in giving us some numbers.
We’ve seen a little bit of that,
but let’s talk for just a second about the number 40.
When we treat these as literal numbers,
we are free to do so.
But whether or not 40 is intended to be a literal number,
and this really holds true throughout the scripture.
This is true throughout the Old Testament.
It’s symbolically true even into the New Testament.
The number 40 in the Bible
always represents a period of struggle,
a period of hardship.
And if you want to take it as literally 40 days,
that’s fine.
But understand that whenever the Bible says 40,
it’s not simply telling you about a period of time,
it’s telling you something about that period of time.
40 always means a challenging,
difficult,
struggling period of time.
So Jesus fasts for how long?
40 days.
The Israelites wander for how long?
40 years.
Excuse me.
That’s not just about the time period itself,
it’s about what is being experienced in that time period.
Yeah, we have that in our own language.
I was trying to think of analogues to that clint,
things like the Marines and
their final test has a certain number of days.
And there’s even a narrative within the Marines
that you’ve survived that.
It’s not that this is in any way a conflict
between literal number keeping,
or you know, scratches on the wall.
It’s that this has in mind far more symbolic
meaning.
It has something to teach us about the struggle of humanity.
This is actually one of the dangers
of coming to the scriptural text
with actually a very specific black and white lens.
If you’re unwilling to read within it
the many layers that are present,
you’ll miss nuance like this.
Because fundamentally,
there’s nothing magic about the number 40 as it relates
to the actual span of days.
But it has something great to tell us
about a season of darkness that extends for a long time.
40 days is a long time in an ark,
ostensibly the idea of being surrounded by stinky animals
and the question of what are we gonna run into
and all of the struggles of relationship
that will happen in 40 days.
That that is the thing that points us
to the depth of God’s provision.
That even in its period as long as that,
God has provided an ark that’s large enough
and supplies that are abundant enough.
So if we are willing to see within these numbers
the many layers of being that’s intended,
I don’t think it in any way contradicts
how many days was the earth actually flooded.
Rather gives us a window into the very state
of the soul of those who were participating
and experiencing this.
Right,
and again,
that may function in the story
as a literal number or it may not.
But either way, whether it is or isn’t,
what is true in both of those scenarios
is that it’s a difficult time.
However long that period lasted,
it’s a challenging time of struggle,
of uncertainty and of endurance.
And that is the character of the number of 40 in the Bible.
And whether you wanna argue it literal or not,
know that about it because that tells you something crucial
about the story whenever it’s used.
And so 40 is an important number.
Yeah, you’ve gotta be careful.
Whenever we make it on the other side of the pearly gates
and we have the opportunity to talk with the folks
who wrote the scriptures,
who gave us these holy texts,
I think it would be very interesting
to hear that conversation.
And I suspect that all of us would be well cautioned
to not get so fixated on a number
that we miss the point of the story.
And this has happened many times in Christian history.
We get fixated on a debate.
Well, what does that thing in particular mean?
And I feel like the author is gonna grab you
by the shoulders and say,
don’t you see that this was all about God?
Don’t get fixated on the weeds
when there was an entire portrait
that was cast in front of you.
And I think these are interesting details
that help us understand and experience the story,
but we should be cautioned
to not make those details the story itself.
Yeah, there are some things in that culture
that meant something to the people
that no longer mean those things to us.
And when we can understand what it meant to them,
it helps us understand the story to a deeper level,
I think.
So they’re in the ark and we know what’s about to come
and yet this is an important part of the story.
So join us tomorrow and we’ll continue on
as we explore Noah.
Thanks everybody.