Genesis – First, God.
Do you have family or friends who refuse to love and follow Jesus? We pray for them each day, don’t we? They know the message but refuse to accept it. We cannot make them come in and it is frustrating because of our love for them. Do we see our neighbors wandering through life with no purpose because they are going their own way in this world? Do we have opportunity to tell them there is another Way in Jesus?
Now IMAGINE this…Rains come to the neighborhood. You can’t get out of the house because of all the water. You sit tight inside. You wonder if your house can withstand the storm. Your house is suddenly lifted up, with you and those who love you and God nestled inside. Great waters come from below and above. You no longer see the sky or land, but you see your lost neighbors struggling to find something to hang on to in the storm. There is nothing for them. You hurt for them but you cannot save them. You can no longer reach them.The doors and windows to your floating home have been shut tight. You see all the souls, but you have nothing to give them, nothing to reach out to them. You are not able or allowed to grab them and bring them into your floating home. It’s too late for them. You are inside and they are outside in the waters. God has shut the door to evil.
God continues his work to cleanse the earth for over a month while Noah cares for who and what is inside his floating home. Noah has no choice but to wait on God.
THEN GOD turned his attention to Noah after His work of cleansing the earth had been down. Here’s what God did next…
Genesis 8
1-3 Then God turned his attention to Noah and all the wild animals and farm animals with him on the ship. God caused the wind to blow and the floodwaters began to go down. The underground springs were shut off, the windows of Heaven closed and the rain quit. Inch by inch the water lowered. After 150 days the worst was over.4-6 On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ship landed on the Ararat mountain range. The water kept going down until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains came into view. After forty days Noah opened the window that he had built into the ship.
7-9 He sent out a raven; it flew back and forth waiting for the floodwaters to dry up. Then he sent a dove to check on the flood conditions, but it couldn’t even find a place to perch—water still covered the Earth. Noah reached out and caught it, brought it back into the ship.
10-11 He waited seven more days and sent out the dove again. It came back in the evening with a freshly picked olive leaf in its beak. Noah knew that the flood was about finished.
12 He waited another seven days and sent the dove out a third time. This time it didn’t come back.
13-14 In the six-hundred-first year of Noah’s life, on the first day of the first month, the flood had dried up. Noah opened the hatch of the ship and saw dry ground. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the Earth was completely dry.
15-17 God spoke to Noah: “Leave the ship, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives. And take all the animals with you, the whole menagerie of birds and mammals and crawling creatures, all that brimming prodigality of life, so they can reproduce and flourish on the Earth.”
18-19 Noah disembarked with his sons and wife and his sons’ wives. Then all the animals, crawling creatures, birds—every creature on the face of the Earth—left the ship family by family.
20-21 Noah built an altar to God. He selected clean animals and birds from every species and offered them as burnt offerings on the altar. God smelled the sweet fragrance and thought to himself, “I’ll never again curse the ground because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age, but I’ll never again kill off everything living as I’ve just done.
22 For as long as Earth lasts,
planting and harvest, cold and heat,
Summer and winter, day and night
will never stop.”
NOAH’S RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORKUpon leaving the ark of protection and salvation, Noah built an altar to God, for God, praising God and pleasing God with a burnt offering. The smell of gratitude rose to God.
GOD’S PROMISE
God’s response to Noah’s humbled gratitude for his salvation was a promise. I will never cleanse the earth this way again…”for as long as Earth lasts…”
A big boat saved Noah and his family. Noah was blessed and grew greater still in his faith. He was not perfect, but he was saved.
Jesus saves us today. Get on board. We are not perfect but we are perfectly forgiven by Jesus who took all our sins upon Himself and eliminated those sins forever. Jesus is THE PROMISE from God for eternal life with Him.Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for your loving plan to sacrifice your Son, Jesus, who saves us, once and for all for eternity. Thank you for saving me. Continue to grow me. Help me to help others find and follow you before it is too late.
In Jesus Name, Amen
