Genesis 8.1-19
Glorious Day (chorus)
Call to worship:
OT reading:
pastor michael champoux
Psalm 4
NT Reading:
pastor bobby owens
2 Peter 1.16-21
song:
New Again
Historical reading:
pastor andrew loginow
Apostles Creed
song:
His mercy is more
Loginow baby dedication: dr brett eckel
Confession & Pardon:
dr. brett eckel
song:
Jesus is better
Sermon:
dr. alex loginow
Gen 8.1-19
Introduction
In preparation for my sermon this week I glanced at my notes from the 1st time I preached Genesis 8, which was before B and I moved back to Michigan and I was pastoring a small country parish in rural Kentucky. To introduce that sermon I talked about how freedom is the paradigm by which we parse the story of America and compared it to the paradigm by which we should parse the story of God’s Kingdom, which Dr. Jim Hamilton rightly summarizes as God’s glory in salvation through judgment, and I’ll add in Christ – God’s glory in salvation through judgment in Christ. But what caught my eye was the date of that sermon – September 11, 2011. The 10 year anniversary of September 11, 2001, which is surely why I used that intro.
I was reminded of remarks that then President George W. Bush gave on September 17th, 2001 at the Islamic center of Washington DC. President Bush said,
“The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.”
Of course, what he meant was that Islamic terrorism does not represent all Muslims globally who practice the religion in peace and even that the heart of the Islamic religion is not evil, war, and terror, but peace. It’s interesting, there’s a sense in which every worldview offers peace. Every religion in the history of humanity claims the way to peace with whatever deity is worshipped. This is true of civilizations as well. For example, the ideology behind America claims to offer peace – the idea behind America, grounded in individual freedom supported by a representative democratic republic and capitalistic economic philosophy is intended to produce a peaceful nation, and, I suppose, since the Truman Doctrine, preserving freedom, intended to yield global peace.
As Christians, we have a worldview too, a worldview that is grounded in Scripture as the revelation of the 1 true and living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, preserved for the last two millennia in the church. The Bible has much to say about peace and our Scripture passage in Genesis 8.1-19 is one such text. That’s why we’re here this Sunday morning, doing what Christians have always done – gathering to hear what God has to say to us because, as the 2nd Helvetic Confession rightly states, “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” So let’s look together at what God has to say to Christ Community Church today.
Peace After the Flood
Notice 1st in the text that everything we’re about to see is initiated by God. There is peace after the storm because God initiated action (vss. 1-5). In verse 1 Moses writes God remembered. What does that mean? Does it mean that God forgot about Noah and then all of the sudden remembered him?
We know that’s false because Scripture teaches that God is perfectly omniscient – all knowing. So what does it mean? When the Bible says God remembered it speaks covenantally. The Hebrew phrase is אֱלֹהִים֙ וַיִּזְכֹּ֤ר. זָכַר means remember and when that verb describes אֱלֹהִים in the Old Testament it means, “to remember persons with kindness, granting requests, protecting, delivering, etc.” It’s never merely intellectual but always includes action.
So in Genesis 8.1 God’s remembering Noah is the receding of the flood waters. The same phrase is used in Exodus 2.24 where God remembered Israel and then delivered them from slavery. God remembered Noah just like He remembered Israel in Egypt. This is a good reminder for us as well that God’s timing is perfect but not always what we’d prefer – Noah had been in the ark for over a year; Israel was enslaved for 400 years in Egypt. God may make us wait, but He doesn’t forget.
We should also note that God’s action here is Trinitarian. Not only does God remember, but also the way in which He restores the dry land is by causing the wind to blow. We mentioned this in Genesis 1: this word wind in Hebrew is ר֙וּחַ֙; it means, “wind, breath, spirit.” There’s no doubt Moses is calling us back to Genesis 1.2 here – just like the ר֙וּחַ֙ hovered over the waters before God separated the water and the land, now the ר֙וּחַ֙ separates them again. And as the Lord Jesus makes clear in John 3 – the wind blows where it will – this is not some generic wind, but the Holy Spirit of God effecting God’s salvation.
And God’s salvation of Noah comes not only through His Spirit but also through His Word. In verses 15-19 God spoke. Noah didn’t leave ark until God told him to. Of course, St. John reveals to us that God’s Word was in the beginning with God and was God and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – the Lord Jesus is the Word of God. Do you now see the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Train your mind to read Scripture in a Trinitarian way because all of Scripture is Christian Scripture.
And the result of this Trinitarian salvation act, Scripture tells us is Noah’s faith working out in obedience. Noah’s faith has been clear since his construction and occupation of the ark (Heb 11.7), and now Moses uses specific language to teach Israel about faith and obedience. First Noah sent out a raven to investigate the postdiluvian world before he sent out the dove. The raven was an unclean bird; Noah wasn’t going to risk losing a clean animal. The raven was tougher than the dove: it could stay in flight longer and survive off of floating carcasses.
Then Noah sent a dove, which is a clean animal. The 2nd time the dove retrieved an olive branch, which to Israel would’ve elicited connotations of worship in the tabernacle/temple with olive oil. We all know that the dove and olive branch are universal signs of peace. This narrative, which is actual history, is also redemptive history – it is for theological education. Moses was conveying to Israel that God was now at peace with the world after the judgment of the flood.
Peace with God through Christ
Like everything else in the Old Testament this scene with Noah is a type/shadow/signpost/providential picture divinely intended to lead us to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the New Testament is unapologetic that this scene was given to prepare us specifically for the baptism of the Lord. Jesus’ baptism is included in all 4 Gospels (Matt 3.13-17; Mark 1.9-11; Luke 3.21-22; John 1.29-34) and all 4 Gospels say that the Holy Spirit descended on Christ like a dove. The 3 synoptics say: the heavens opened, the Spirit descended like dove, and the Father spoke. Rest assured, there are no coincidences in the Bible. When the Holy Spirit inspired Moses to write Genesis 8 He was weaving the shadow of Jesus into the narrative and when we read Genesis and the Gospels, God intends for us to make that connection.
This is because true and final peace with God exists in Jesus alone. Romans 5.1 says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Justified means declared righteous. The reason why none of us are born at peace with God is because we are guilty sinners who need righteousness.
Like the world before the flood the thoughts of the intentions of our hearts are only evil continually. We are born with this guilt because we inherit original sin from our father Adam and because we inherit Adam’s sin nature, we practice sin in thought, word, and deed, by what we do and by what we leave undone. We do not love God with our whole heart; we do not love our neighbors as ourselves. And because we’re guilty we justly deserve eternal conscious punishment in hell.
But the good news is we can have peace with God because we can be justified – declared righteous. How are we justified? Scripture says by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only way to justification because he is the last Adam, the true Israel. He is the eternal 2nd person of the Holy Trinity, the only begotten Son of God, the Word of God who became flesh. In the flesh Jesus is righteous – He never sinned in thought, word, and deed and that is why at His baptism, when He’s anointed with the Spirit like a dove, the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I’m well pleased.”
And because the Father is well pleased in Jesus, Jesus took His righteous life and offered it on the cross and the true and final clean sacrifice for the sins of God’s elect. And because Jesus is righteous, God raised Him on the 3rd day, inaugurating the new creation that the postdiluvian world prefigures. And like Noah, the only way we can be justified, declared righteous, the only way we can have peace with God, is faith in the righteous one who suffered death and defeated death, Jesus Christ. Faith means 1st that we know this good news about salvation from judgment of sin in Jesus alone, but faith is more than mere knowledge. Second, faith also includes assent of this good news of salvation in Jesus alone – we confess it and don’t deny it. The 3rd and final component of faith is trust – we trust Jesus alone.
When our faith is in Jesus alone we are justified, declared righteous before God, finally, fully, and forever. But God also begins to make us righteous in thought, word, and deed and He does this through repentance. To repent means we confess and turn from our sin. Repentance happens initially when the Holy Spirit descends on our hearts like a dove, God’s peace, making us new like the creation in Noah’s day, but it is also a lifelong spiritual discipline that gives assurance of our faith.
Peace in the Church
Repentance is how we respond when we sin, but positively, proactively, through Jesus, God not only makes peace with us, but He creates peace between us. Peace with God creates peace in God’s kingdom, the church. Ephesians 2.14 says Jesus is our peace and Jesus creates peace in the church, regardless of our differences. Regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, political views, hobbies, or any other difference we’re tempted to divide over, the fellowship, the like-mindedness, our collective proximity to Jesus, bridges any and every divide so that we can have peace with our brothers and sisters.
This is true, first and foremost in the Kingdom of God, the church, but in God’s common grace, Christian peace has spilled over into the world, the kingdom of man. The world has known peace through Christians bringing peace to the world. Now there’s no doubt that much sin has been perpetrated in the name of Christ; we’re not proud of the crusades, for example, but most of what the modern world knows as caregiving originated from the church. The abolition of slavery, women’s rights, protection for the unborn, children, and the elderly, hospitals, schools, disaster relief – all have their genesis in Christian origins.
Where does this worldview of peace come from? The bottom line is our faith, salvation in Jesus, is revealed in the Bible, God’s Word. It derives from our faith that God speaks through His Word, Scripture. Just like God speaks and His Spirit (ר֙וּחַ֙) applies salvation with Noah, just like that scene is fulfilled in the baptism of the Lord, this same work of God is true in the very nature of the Bible itself. The Southern Seminary crest depicts a dove descending on the Bible. This is intentional, of course, because it conveys that just like the Spirit descended like a dove on Jesus at His baptism, so does the Spirit inspire Scripture.
2nd Timothy 3.16 says, all Scripture is breathed out by God. Breathed out by God is the Greek θεοπνευστος, which is a compound word literally meaning, “God-Spirited.” It’s referring to the inspiration of the Spirit in the words of Scripture. We read from 2nd Peter 1.16-21 in our New Testament Call to Worship. In that pericope St. Peter, who witnessed the transfiguration of Christ when God declaring the same words He did at Jesus’ baptism, and Peter says that it’s better to have the Bible than to even have heard those words, because men carried along by the Holy Spirit wrote the Scripture.
And by the way, in both of those passages Peter and Paul are referring to the Old Testament. Both say that the Spirit-inspired Word is all about Jesus. So we know that Genesis 8 is inspired by God and it’s pointing us to Jesus. It’s pointing us to peace with God through Jesus.
Conclusion
And that’s what God has to say to us this morning in Genesis 8.1-19, isn’t it? We can have peace with God through Jesus Christ and that peace with God will yield peace among God’s people in the church. That’s why, ultimately, Islam, or any other religion, or America, or any other civilization cannot and does not offer true peace. Islam is not peace; neither is Buddhism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witness, or Judaism, or naturalism, or any other World Religion. America is not peace; neither is Israel, or communism, or any other civilization. We have peace with God, how? Since we are justified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This morning I pray that peace, the peace found in Jesus alone, that peace be with you.