COMES TO AN END

GOD REMEMBERS NOAH AND STOPS THE FLOOD

8:1-5 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. 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.

The Flood prevailed for 150 days, utterly destroying the world that was and leaving the remains of multitudes of dead organisms buried in its sediments or still floating in its waters. Then God began to bring this great deluge to a termination.

The exact turning point in this whole account is the statement:

But God remembered Noah… It does not imply that God had forgotten him and suddenly called him to mind. No, it was quite the opposite. Noah had never been out of His thoughts. This passage is speaking of God’s gracious intervention and His commitment to rescue Noah.

There is no mention of God talking to Noah and his family while they were on the ark. They simply trusted that God would see them safely through the flood and on to a new life in a new world.

God kept his promise and acted to bring all those in the ark into a new world, just as later He acted to redeem his covenant people from Egypt and bring them to the Promised Land. God is committed now to bringing all those who belong to Christ to the joys of heaven and His new creation.

The ark, full of living creatures, was under the protection of God. He acted to restore the earth and repopulate it with the life kept safe in the ark in two ways.

1. He caused a wind to pass over the earth.

 

The text does not speak of God’s Spirit hovering over the surface of the waters, as in Genesis 1:2, but the Hebrew word for “Spirit” (ruach) is also the word for “wind”. The theme is similar in that you have a reshaping of the earth’s surface by God. God was not creating, but using the wind to return the earth to its former livable state.

What God does is cause a wind to pass over the waters. The verb (abar – to cause) is in the Hiphil pattern, which is normally used when a second cause participates in the action. The wind is the secondary agent, whereas God is the principal cause.

2. He stopped the fountains of the deep from further eruptions, and He closed the windows of heaven from further down-pours. The waters returned to their appointed place.

Psalm 104:5-9 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth.

The same phrase, “the waters receded”, is used of the Red Sea returning to its former state (Exodus 14:26, 28). In the case of the Flood, the waters did not return suddenly. They diminished gradually (“they continued to recede”). The process had begun to take place 150 days after the Flood started.

Evidence that the water level had fallen twenty feet was felt when the bottom of the ark grounded on one of the mountains in the Ararat region (17,000 feet in elevation). The area is now called Armenia and straddles the borders of eastern Turkey, southern Russia and northern Iran.

It is significant that the ark is said to have “come to rest” on the mountains of Ararat, as though it had to be laboring for five months in accomplishing its work of saving its occupants from sin and judgment.

The ark as a type of Christ finished its mission of deliverance from sin and judgment as Christ finished His on the cross. Only those in the ark were saved from judgment as only those in Christ are saved from eternal judgment.

It is also interesting that the ark rested on “the seventeenth day of the seventh month”, and according to the Jewish civil calendar the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead also on “the seventeenth day of the seventh month,” three days after the Passover which was set by the Jewish calendar for the fourteenth day of the seventh month (Exodus 12:2).

In Psalm 29:10 we see God as the one who sits enthroned over the flood. He unleashed the waters and then recalled them to the boundaries set at creation.

The Bible uses the sea to symbolize God’s sovereignty over the unruly forces of nature and the dark powers of evil.

Proverbs 8:27-29 Wisdom was there when God set the heavens in place, when He marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when He established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when He gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep His command, and when He marked out the foundations of the earth.

Psalm 89:9-10 You O Lord, rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up, you still them. You crushed Rahab like one of the slain; with your strong arm you scattered your enemies.

Psalm 104:1-4  Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants.

APPLICATION

There are two great truths we learn from this portion of Scripture. 1. God is so powerful that even the elements of nature are under His sovereign control. 2. God will powerfully rescue and deliver from His judgment those who put their trust in Him and do what He says.