Genesis 7
Messenger Dox
Call to worship:
OT reading:
pastor andrew loginow
Exodus 20.1-17
NT reading:
pastor zachary mcguire
Hebrews 10.1-10
song:
The Lord almighty reigns
Historical reading:
pastor michael champoux
Apostles Creed
song:
Man of sorrows
Confession & Pardon:
dr. brett eckel
song:
Christ the sure & steady anchor
Sermon:
dr. alex loginow
Genesis 7
Introduction
If you’re anything like me, your first exposure to fairy tales came through Disney animated films. How was I introduced to fairy stories like Snow White and Cinderella? Because growing up we watched the Disney versions on vhs. But if you know anything about fairy tales, the original stories are more dark and gruesome than Disney’s depictions. For example, we’re all familiar with The Little Mermaid – the story of Ariel the mermaid, who wants to be part of our world, so she strikes a deal with Ursula the sea witch where in exchange for Ariel’s voice, Ariel becomes human, and if Prince Eric falls in love with her she will remain human. If Ariel’s unsuccessful, she’ll become a shrimplike creature enslaved to the sea witch. Because it’s a Disney film, of course it ends in happily ever after.
But the original fairy tale, published in 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen is much darker. In the original the mermaid doesn’t merely lose her voice, but the sea witch cuts out her tongue. Also, as the mermaid is transformed into a human it feels like a sword is piercing her body, and when she walks on her new feet it feels as if she’s walking on knives and her feet bleed constantly. She is unable to make the prince fall in love with her and instead of happily ever after the mermaid dissolves into sea foam and becomes a luminous ethereal spirit. By the way, this was considered Danish children’s literature in 1837!
We do the same thing with the Bible. Too often biblical narratives like Noah and the global flood are neutered like a Disney fairy tale. Children’s story Bibles, Veggie Tales, or way too many kids’ Sunday school classes pass down a cute story about Noah and his floating zoo as if it’s a fairy tale. But the Biblical account is much darker and much more gruesome than we often realize. Noah’s ark is a story of sin, sacrifice, and salvation.
Sin
This account is about sin resulting in global death – it’s as dark as it sounds. Noah and his family enter the ark with this specific group of animals, but every other living being, every other animal, every other human being on the planet drown to death. The flood is judgment for sin. Sin began with Adam’s fall in Genesis 3 and then compounds exponentially. We have traced the pervasiveness of sin from Adam’s fall, through Cain’s murder, to Lamech’s murder and polygamy, reaching a climax in Genesis 6 with the sons of God and the daughters of man. At this point there is a global pandemic of depravity – every intention of the thoughts of men’s hearts are only evil continually (Gen 6.5).
This evil brought chaos to God’s creation and so God judges the world by resetting it, in a way. Verse 11 says the fountains of the great deep burst forth. The great deep is the Hebrew, תְּה֣וֹם; it’s the same word used in Genesis 1.2 – the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. It’s referring to the watery deep, the salty ocean, especially the primeval waters that covered the earth in chaos before God ordered the chaos and separated the waters from the land (Gen 1.9-10). In this global flood, water came from the sky as it rained, but water also came up from the oceans and it’s almost as if there’s a reversal of creation. In Genesis 1 God ordered the chaos by separating the waters from the land. Here in Genesis 7 chaos invades the order as the waters cover the land.
And this is where we must sit in the darkness of this pericope – God drowns the world. Genesis 7 describes global capitol punishment. Did you feel the weight of the words in verses 21-24: all flesh died on the earth…everything…in whose nostrils was the breath of life died? This vocabulary: nostrils, breath, life in verse 22 [חַיִּ֜ים נִשְׁמַת־ר֨וּחַ] harkens back to Genesis 2.7 when yhwh formed Adam from the dust and breathed the breath of life in him. But what we have now in Genesis 7 is a reversal: everything in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.
What are we to make of God here? Is He a petty, vindictive mass murderer? Is this just another example of the “evil god of the Old Testament?” When God created Adam, God warned of judgment of death for sin (Gen 2.17; Rom 6.23). That means every sin justly deserves death. God is just to execute the judgment of death on any sinner at any time. And it’s not as if God only exercises His prerogative in the Old Testament either, think of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5.1-11. It should not surprise us when a sinner dies, what should surprise us is that sinners live. The fact that any person has any lifespan is the common grace of God.
And that’s true of all of us because we are all sinners (Rom 3.23; 1 John 1.8). We are all guilty of breaking God’s Law in thought, word, and deed. This is why guilt and shame are universal human experiences. We have inherited a sin nature from Adam and the result is that we practice sin and because we practice sin we experience guilt and shame until 1 of 2 things happen – we repent or harden our heart/sear our conscience. Because we inherit our guilt from Adam, there’s nothing we can do to fix it on our own. We are inherently unrighteous; we need an alien righteousness. We need righteousness from outside of us.
Sacrifice
Because we’re guilty, we need someone else to atone for our sin. This has been true from the beginning. After Adam sinned God covered Adam’s sin with blood of another (Gen 3.21) – the 1st gospel promise of Genesis 3.15 was accompanied by the picture of blood sacrifice for sin. Adam then taught his sons this theology of atonement and imputation (Gen 4).
The brutal practice of animal blood sacrificed was then passed down from Adam to Seth all the way to Noah and here in verses 2-3 and 8 yhwh tells Noah to bring 7 pairs of clean animals on ark. That’s curious, isn’t it? The Law wasn’t given until Mt. Sinai; how did Noah know what a clean animal was? He knew because this theology and practice of clean animals for sacrifice was passed down from Adam. Noah didn’t have to ask God, “What’s a clean animal?” He knew because God’s people practiced brutal animal sacrifice for sin since Genesis 3.
Noah is required to bring 7 pairs of clean animals on the ark along with a pair of all of the other animals. In Scripture 7 represents perfection/completion. As they prepare to enter the Promised Land, Moses is teaching Israel the history and importance of bloody animal sacrifice that was formalized in the Law. God’s people practiced these gruesome, bloody, animal sacrifices for thousands of years, day in and day out. It’s important that we feel both how tedious that is and how gross that is. It is tedious because our sin stays with us every day everywhere we go. It’s gross because sin is gross; it’s offensive to God and sin yields death – our own death or, in this case, the death of an animal in their place.
It is when we sit in the tedious and gross nature of these brutal animal sacrifices, day in, day out, year in, year out, that we understand why the death of Jesus is such good news. In our Old Testament Call to Worship Pastor Zack read from Hebrews 10, which reveals that all of the brutal animal sacrifices, day in, day out, year in, year out were leading us to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is at the cross, at Calvary, on Good Friday that the see the true and final atonement for sin; the true and better brutal, bloody sacrifice. Through His death on the cross Jesus endured the just condemnation/judgment/wrath/justice/hell for the sins of God’s elect. All of the brutal slaughtered animals in the history of Israel; the 7 pairs of clean animals on Noah’s ark were signs pointing us to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. They were types leading us to something greater; they were shadows reflecting the substance that is Christ.
2nd Corinthians 5.21 says that Jesus became our sin so that we might become His righteousness. The theological term we use for this is imputation. Our sin is imputed/placed upon/made true of Jesus so that His righteousness might be imputed/placed upon/made true of His people. The only way we can be justified, declared righteous, before God is if the righteousness of Jesus is given to us. How does that happen? How do we receive the righteousness of Christ?
Salvation
We get a glimpse here with Noah on the ark, surrounded by death and looking to the promise pictured in sacrifice, Noah had to trust. Hebrews 11.7 says, Noah constructed the ark in faith and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. We mentioned last week both about Noah’s faith, which made him righteous, and the typology revealed with the ark – just as Noah was safe from God’s judgment in the ark, so are we only safe from God’s eternal judgment when we are in Christ. Jesus is the true and better ark and our only hope to be saved from the flood of God’s just wrath is in Christ.
In 1st Peter 3.18-22, St. Peter also reveals that the ark is a type/shadow/signpost of baptism. Inspired by the Spirit, Peter writes that Jesus suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He may bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. Then Peter continues that the ark brought Noah and his family safe through the water. And in verse 21 he writes, Baptism, which corresponds to this, which now saves you…as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The word the ESV translated corresponds is the Greek αντιτυπον. Peter says the ark is a type of baptism. As Noah and his family were saved in the ark from the flood of God’s judgment, so are we saved in Christ from the flood of God’s wrath. Baptism signifies this as we identify with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. We experience the waters, as the ark did. And it is no coincidence that just as Noah came off the ark and sacrificed the clean animals, so do we come to the Eucharist, the sign of Christ’s sacrifice after we pass through the waters of baptism.
We see another shadow of Jesus here when Moses tells us that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. 40 is a covenantally significant number – Moses’ life is divided into 40 year thirds. Israel spied out Canaan for 40 days. Of course, that was after they wandered in wilderness for 40 years. There’s no doubt that when Israel heard that it rained for 40 days, they saw themselves in Noah’s situation, but the Holy Spirit was pointing us to someone even greater than Israel; He is bringing us to the true Israel – Jesus.
Whenever you see 40 anything in Scripture you should train your mind to think of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. After His baptism, Jesus fasted in the wilderness for 40 days where He was tempted by the devil and Jesus did not sin. We often discuss the active righteousness of Christ meaning Jesus never sinned. Hebrews 4.15 says Jesus is without sin. 2nd Corinthians 5.21 says Jesus knew no sin. 1st Peter 2.22 says Jesus committed no sin.
And this is true, but the sinlessness of Christ, His Law-abiding, is epitomized in His 40 day temptation and defeat of Satan. It was in His temptation that Jesus showed us He is sinless one, last Adam, true Israel. In the temptation Christ recapitulates Adam and where Adam failed, Jesus succeeds. Adam was tempted by the devil and sinned; Jesus was tempted by the devil and did not. Jesus also recapitulates Israel who wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, yet where Israel failed and were unable to enter Canaan, Jesus succeeded. This is why our only hope is faith in Jesus – because Jesus is the only righteous one; like Noah in the ark as it rained 40 days, our only hope is to be in the one who endured Satan’s temptation for 40 days and endured the flood of God’s just wrath against sin on the cross.
For centuries God’s people have identified with the suffering and temptation of Christ in the practice of Lent. Lent is the season that prepares us for Easter. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, Christians fast for 40 days – every day of the week except Sunday because every Sunday we break fast in anticipation for Easter. Practicing Lent is not required in Scripture, it’s not sinful to do or not do. It is simply a spiritual discipline aligned with the church calendar.
The purpose of Lent is to fast and when you crave that which you’re fasting from, you spend time in prayer. If you don’t practice Lent, I think you’re missing out, but even if you don’t, do you ever fast? Do you spend time in prayer?
While traditions and practices like Lent are beneficial, the most important question I can ask as we reflect on Genesis 7 is do you have faith in Jesus? Like Noah, our only hope is faith in Jesus. Faith begins with the knowledge that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5.8). Faith also means assenting to that good news, confessing it and not denying Jesus. And faith means transferring your trust to Jesus alone.
How do you know if your faith is genuine? You repent of your sin. You confess your sin and you turn from your sin. The good news of Jesus is effective; it is not impotent. The gospel will either soften you to repentance through faith, or it will harden you to a seared conscience. The same sun that melts the snow hardens the clay.
Conclusion
But the light and warmth of the sun is only understood in Genesis 7 after the dark rain clouds. We can’t neuter Noah’s story like a Disney animated film, because it so much darker and more gruesome than a fun story of a floating zoo. But that’s actually really good news because the truth is that those dark and gruesome fairy tales of old genuinely reflect the dark and gruesome nature of sin, death, and this broken world more clearly than their subdued animated children. This world is dark and gruesome, our sin is dark and gruesome, but the good news is that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light, which gives light to everyone, came into the world…and all who receive Him, who believe in His name, to them He gives the right to become the children of God…And He became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.