The story we know is a children's story; we all have vivid pictures of the cute little ark rolling with the waves as the animals and an older man with a white beard wave from a window... that is not the story of Genesis.
According to Genesis 7, the story is no children's fairy tale. It is the picture of promise, judgment and salvation. The Lord made a promise, to blot out all that He created except those confined to an ark made by one who was faithful, not perfect but faithful.
The Lord fulfilled His promise by sending water, not just rain but all the water from everywhere, upon the earth. The Lord, through the fulfilling of His promise, brought judgment to those who rebelled from Him, held no reverence of Him and worship others and themselves over Him.
The ark represented salvation for eight who He claimed as His own. It represented the salvation God gave those eight on His own accord. The eight, along with many animals, endured 150 days as Genesis states while the waters prevailed. The waters prevailed over all the mountains and at such heights that the ark never touched even the highest of mountains. And, while the ark endured, Genesis states very clearly that all the flesh died that moved on the earth along with all animals and other living things... everything and everyone died except those He chose to put on the ark. This is the God we worship!
We like to reduce Him down to one of us. We tend to focus on those attributes that allow us to live our comfortable lives the way we want to live them. We forget that those who are truly in Christ rest in the ark, and the ark is not a pleasure palace, by any means. Those days on that ark were not comfortable. Noah and his family did not spend time on the upper deck getting a sweet tan while the Lord protected them and delivered them to a paradise built just for them. No, those days were filled with hard labor as the animals had to be feed and watched. The ark had to be cleaned and swept and washed almost all the time, and during all of this, they still were to take time to worship the God of all as Genesis is clear, clean animals were to be taken on to the ark for sacrifice.
We have taken this story and done to it what we do to God... reduce it to the story that we want to hear; the one that relieves us of our guilt and responsibility. This story is God the way He wants Himself presented. He is not safe for those outside the ark. One last point about the ark... in relation to all things, it is not large enough to house everyone.Its size should point to Jesus and his statement concerning the sheep and the goats. There are many who will claim Him as the Lord, but in the end, He will say to them, I hardly knew you.
Have you ever thought of those who did not end up in the ark? The earth was populated at this time with people just like Noah. People who treated others with respect, who had friends, who worked hard and who tried to do what is right.We tend to think that Noah and his sons were the only moral people on the earth at that time. The scripture does not say that.When the rains came families, nice people, villages... all of these were swept away by the water and perished. Again, what does this say about the God we worship?
What it says to me is that there are a lot of important things in this Christian walk, but there is nothing more important than God's Son, Jesus Christ, and there is no other book that teaches more about His Son than the Bible. I feel strongly that I was meant to hear this sermon today. All that has come down on top of me recently was still for a purpose, and that purpose is for me to hear that God is who He is in His story found only in scripture. He is not found in theology, tradition, or any one denomination. God is found in the place He has chosen to be found - in His Son, Jesus Christ!
The Ark and the Flood is the story of God, His character and His love for His people. Noah, while finding favor with God, was the beneficiary of a loving God choosing to exercise His grace on him. The Ark, floating on the waters, was God's grace to His people all wrapped up in His character, His promises, His judgment and His salvation!
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