God Remembered…

1. God Remembered… Genesis 8

2. Have you ever felt all alone in a crowded place? • Have you ever felt trapped in a difficult situation? • Have you ever wondered when a time of trouble in your life will end? • Imagine how Noah was feeling

3. Noah and his family were the ONLY people left on the earth. (See Gen. 7:23) Although the ark was a busy and crowded place, he might have felt lonely. • Once God shut the ark door (See Gen. 7:16), Noah had to stay inside. It was probably noisy and smelly all the time with so many animals, but he couldn’t escape or have a day off for one whole year!

4. God told Noah how to prepare for the flood (build the ark, bring the animals and food, even when the flood would begin), but once he was inside the ark, there was no information about how long he would have to be inside. • In such a stressful situation, we start Genesis 8 with good news: “God remembered Noah!” And he remembers us too.

5. Genesis 8:1-2 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.

6. Genesis 8:3-5 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains became visible.

7. God’s remembering Noah was a sign of his mercy returning to humankind (whom He did not completely destroy). • The same One who brings destruction is the One who brings deliverance. • When our difficulties have accomplished what God desired, they will be removed. • Just as the earth was not drowned in a day, it was also not dried in a day. Sometimes God works our deliverance gradually, too.

8. The wind God sent was not a light breeze. It was strong, hot and drying--causing some of the floodwaters to evaporate and return to the atmosphere. • The mountains of Ararat are in modern-day Armenia (Turkey and Iran are its neighbors). It is not one mountain, but a range of many peaks. • God guided Noah to a place of rest He provided after the ark had been tossing and turning for months on a world of water.

9. Genesis 8:6-9 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark.

10. Genesis 8:10-12 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

11. The raven was sent out first because it’s a bird that could eat the carcasses floating in the floodwaters. It did come back to perch on the ark (flying back and forth between finding food and resting there). • The olive leaf brought back by the dove symbolized the peace restored between God and humanity. • Perhaps after keeping 3 different Sabbath days with his little “church,” Noah sent out the dove expecting to see how God had answered their prayers.

12. Genesis 8:13-14 By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

13. Noah and his family stayed in the ark 1 full year (See Genesis 7:11), although when the rain began they had no idea how long their “ride” would be.

14. Genesis 8:15-17 Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.”

15. Genesis 8:18-19 So Noah came out, together with his sons and wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

16. God knows what is good for us, even better than we know ourselves. He considers our benefit rather than just our desires. • Since Noah had a command to go into the ark, he waited (no matter how tiring and difficult his time inside was) for another command before he came out.

17. Genesis 8:20-22 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

18. Noah’s first action wasn’t to build a house for himself in that desolate world, but to offer sacrifices to God in thanksgiving. Whenever we have a chance to start over, we also should begin with worship. • God was pleased with this act of worship, and it moved Him to affirm his purpose of salvation for humanity. • Eph. 5:2 uses the same words of sacrifice and pleasing aroma to describe Jesus • Although the flood washed away the wicked people, it could not cleanse the sin from human nature. (See Gen. 9:20)

19. God promises never to destroy all living creatures in a flood again. The next time the world is destroyed, it will be with fire. (See 2 Pet. 3:7) • No matter what we call the seasons, God also promises that the times necessary for vegetation (and thus the survival of humankind) will not fail. • This is the end of the story of the ark, and looking back we can see reminders of God’ patience, justice, mercy, and salvation.

20. God was patient in giving that corrupt and thoroughly violent world a full and fair warning. (Think of all the time Noah needed to build the ark, and even the first few days of rain which allowed some people to repent before dying.) • God was just in punishing the completely wicked generation of Noah’s time with death. • God was merciful in preserving Noah and his family as a remnant of His good creation.

21. God used the ark to save the physical lives of Noah and his family, and now we have Jesus who saves us in the same way from the spiritual death and separation from God that sin brings. • God remembers you, too—just like Noah! And through Jesus He made a way for you to be saved eternally.