MORNING MESSAGE: John Cline
Genesis 7:17-9:17
Some time ago a writer named Robert Fulghum wrote an essay called “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” It was so popular that it spawned a number of spin-offs, including one entitled,
“All I Need to Know I Learned from Noah’s Ark.”
1. Don’t miss the boat.
2. Remember that we are all in the same boat.
3. Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.
4. Stay fit. When you’re 600 years old someone may ask you to do something really big.
5. Don’t listen to critics, just get on with the job that needs to be done.
6. Build your future on high ground.
7. For safety’s sake travel in pairs.
8. Speed isn’t everything. Tortoises were on board with the cheetahs.
9. When you’re stressed, float awhile.
10. Remember the Ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals.
11. No matter the storm, when you are with God there’s always a rainbow waiting.
Last week, we began our look at the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark. We observed that in 250-300 ancient civilizations there were stories of a great flood that covered the earth, with many of them echoing the details in the Bible, such as 8 people as well as animals being on board a boat. We also looked at the faithfulness of Noah who was obedient in building an ark while living in a desert area with no rain. And, we noted the tenderness and faithfulness of God who, once the Ark was built and loaded, shut in Noah, his family, and the animals and birds, a reminder that God never gives an assignment to people and then wishes them, “Good luck!”, or in this case, “Bon voyage!” “You’re on your own.” Rather the Lord stays with the person He has given a task to until that task is completed. Today, we will start with,
For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased, they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. (Genesis 7:17-22)
Only creatures that breathed oxygen through their nostrils were taken into the ark. Insects and acarids such as spiders and scorpions weren’t taken in as they could survive outside the ark by living and snacking on floating vegetation. As well, some insects have aquatic larval stages that can last over a year, while other insects can survive long periods without food by going dormant. Fish, obviously, did not need to be taken into the Ark. Going on the text…
Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. 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. (Genesis 7:23-8:1)
Not one of us would have blamed Noah and his family if they wondered if God had forgotten about them as their ark was violently tossed around by the huge waves that surely resulted from the “springs from the great deep bursting forth” (i.e. the volcanoes under the ocean erupting water onto the earth) as well as “the floodgates of the heavens” raining upon them for “forty days and forty nights”. But God hadn’t forgotten them, at all. In fact, He “remembered” them, a tender statement, and He would soon bring them to success and safety.
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. (Genesis 8:2-4)
Mount Ararat is a snow-capped and dormant volcano located in Eastern Turkey and standing 16,854 feet above sea level.
Project photo of Mount Ararat https://www.britannica.com/place/Mount-Ararat
We read that “all the high mountains…were covered” by the flood waters. Because Mount Ararat is the highest mountain in the area, it would have been the first to show when the waters receded, and tradition ascribes to it the landing place of Noah’s Ark.
Project map showing location of Mount Ararat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ararat-Location.png
Mount Ararat forms a near-quadripoint between the nations of Turkey, Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan and all four of those nations claim that Mount Ararat rightfully belongs to them, and thus it is a contested, long fought-over area. For many decades, Turkey declared Mount Ararat off-limits to everyone but their military personnel. However, that changed, due to the September 5th, 1960, issue of Life magazine showed a photo taken from a Turkish military plane which showed a boat-like form located on a mountain 18 miles south of Mount Ararat. The accompanying article, entitled “NOAH’S ARK?”, told of how a Turkish army captain Ilhan Durupinar “gaped” when he saw that photo for he realized that its size and shape resembled those of Noah’s Ark. Here is a photo of that landform…
Project Noah’s Ark National Park site in Turkey https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Attraction_Review-g790195-d4801988-Reviews-Noah_s_Ark_site-Dogubeyazit_Agri_Province.html#/media/4801988/?albumid=-160&type=ALL_INCLUDING_RESTRICTED&category=-160
Life magazine was widely read in 1960, and that September 5th issue was read by millions of people, including by a 27-year-old American named Ron Wyatt. In 1977, after finally receiving permission from the Turkish government to visit the site, he went there with shovels and tools in hand. After doing a lot of digging, Ron Wyatt concluded that the object under the surface could truly be Noah’s Ark, and he published a best-selling book about it. Universities in the USA and Turkey took up the challenge and they concluded…well, “Maybe”! Seizing the opportunity of money that increased tourism would bring to its nation, guess what Turkey did? It created “Noah’s Ark National Park”, in the hopes of tourist dollars! Who could’ve blamed them?
Project photo of Noah’s Ark National Park sign https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1333015041473111&set=pcb.1333033291471286
Now, it does make total sense than the ice-clad, dormant volcano that is Mount Ararat would not have been a good place for Noah to land the ark. In fact, Genesis 8:4 says that the ark landed, not on Mount Ararat itself, but “on the mountains of Ararat”, meaning on a mountain somewhere within the Ararat Mountains range. Think about it: If you were Noah, would you land your huge craft near the top of the highest, craggiest peak in the mountain chain or would you land it on a grassy spot on a nearby mountain half that height? The alternate, grassy, lower, site makes sense. So, if you go to Noah’s Ark National Park you can come back and give us a full report as to what you have found there. I must say I have my doubts, though…
Now, when I was in seminary, I was taught that the Flood might’ve been localized, limited to Mesopotamia’s so-called Fertile Crescent (today’s Iraq), but that makes no sense textually, for the mountains of Ararat are hundreds of kilometres to the west of Mesopotamia. As well, the depth of the flood was at least deep enough to cover Mount Ararat, so it could not have been only a localized flood restricted only to Mesopotamia. Then, there are the Great Flood stories in the histories of 250-300 ancient civilizations. All that points to it being what the Bible claims: a worldwide flood. The difficulty in believing that could be so, let’s be honest, is simply fear in us of looking stupid in front of people. Believing the Biblical account would mean throwing out what each of us was taught in school (that Noah and the Ark was a myth). However, as more and more geological, archaeological, and historical evidence continues to come in from non-biblical sources supporting the biblical account of a worldwide Great Flood, stating that one believes it happened is easier and easier.
There is a current popular saying that “the science is settled”, which is a shut-down term used to quiet dissenters on any topic. But, the science is rarely ever settled, as can be seen in the example of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865), a Hungarian obstetrician who discovered the importance of hand washing in 1847. Semmelweis noticed that many new mothers in a Vienna hospital’s maternity ward were dying from a mysterious illness called childbed fever. He also noted the high rate of deaths shortly after birth for the newborns. He hypothesized that doctors and medical students were transferring a “morbid poison” from autopsies to the delivery room. Semmelweis urged his colleagues to wash their hands with chlorine before examining women in labor. His discovery helped prevent childbed fever, which had been killing about many new mothers and newborns.
Semmelweis imposed a rule mandating handwashing with chlorine for doctors in his hospital. The rates of death in his maternity ward fell dramatically. This was the first proof that cleansing hands could prevent infection. However, the innovation was not popular with everyone: some doctors were disgruntled that Semmelweis was implying that they were to blame for the deaths, and they stopped washing their hands, arguing in support of the prevailing notion at that time that water was the potential cause of disease. Semmelweis tried to persuade other doctors in European hospitals of the benefits of handwashing, but to no avail. It wasn’t until, during the Crimean War, that British nurse Florence Nightingale implemented handwashing and other hygiene practices in the war hospital in which she worked. Sadly, the hand hygiene practices promoted by Semmelweis and Nightingale were not widely adopted. In general, handwashing promotion stood still for over a century. It was not until the 1980s, when a string of foodborne outbreaks and healthcare-associated infections led to public concern that the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified hand hygiene as an important way to prevent the spread of infection! The “science was settled” proved to be false.
Also, consider the rigid jurists enforcing the Roman Catholic Inquisition who, in 1633, condemned Galileo Galilei as a heretic and ordered him confined for the rest of his life to house arrest after he dared state that the earlier Polish astronomer Copernicus (whose books had been burned by the Roman Catholic Church and who had been himself declared a heretic) was correct in stating that the sun, not the earth, is at the centre of the solar system.
Listen, none of us understand everything about God or His ways, but the Bible is by far the best guide to doing so. Besides which, we don’t have to understand everything fully to believe it. I don’t understand everything a person tells me about, e.g. the best agricultural methods, but I will believe it anyway. Believing that the “science is settled” concerning Noah and his Ark simply because we were told what to believe when we were in school, does not mean that it truly has been settled that Noah and his Ark are a myth. Going on…
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. After forty days Noah opened a window, he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. (Genesis 8:5-7)
We are not told what happened to the raven, but we do know that ravens are scavenger birds which feed mostly on the decaying flesh of dead creatures. There would have been plenty of that in the flood waters! Sorry for that image! Noah next sent out a dove. Three times!
Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so, it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. (Gen 8:8-12)
Doves are not scavenger birds but feed only upon food that is dry and clean. When the dove did not return to Noah a third time, Noah knew that the end of their cruise time on the Ark was coming closer.
By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry. Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.” So, Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even thoughevery inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” (Genesis 8:13-22)
God “remembered” Noah, his family, and the other living creatures. Then God promised that He would never again – even though “every inclination of the human heart is evil” – “curse the ground” or “destroy all living creatures”. God has kept that promise. God does not renege on His promises. He keeps them. Do you believe that? What promises has He made to you? Let’s each take two minutes to ponder what God has promised to us…God is not like humans: He will not lie. Trust Him!
Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made humankind. As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.” (Genesis 9:1-7)
These verses recall the Creation events of Genesis 1 and 2: the dominion of humans over every living thing, the command to respect all animal life – no cruelty, unnecessary killings, or eating of meat – for a creature’s blood represents its life; and the command to have the utmost respect for human life. Why? Because God has made every human in His image, the significance of which cannot be overstated. Noah was given humanity’s “second chance” to live in God’s will.
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” So, God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.” (Genesis 9:8-17)
This is the first time the word for covenant, berith, is used in the Bible. God is serious about keeping His promises. He may have destroyed the world as everyone knew it, but his covenant promise was – and is – to never again destroy the world by a flood. As part of the berith, the covenant, God also said, “I’m going to give you a future. I promise that and through you, this world will have a new start, a second chance.” Note that the covenant was not bilateral. Noah never said a word. Noah never signed a document verifying his part of the covenant. Noah didn’t pledge anything. He didn’t promise anything. This covenant was a unilateral promise that God made. God sovereignly, independently, and unilaterally obligated Himself to save the family of Noah first and then all of us for all time. It would be totally God’s doing. All that Noah had to do was obey God by living for Him after. That’s true for us, too!
I will finish with a few words about the rainbow. Jews and Christians have no trademark on it. In Chinese mythology, the goddess Nuwa used a rainbow to seal a slit in the sky. In Hinduism, the rainbow is the bow of the small-g god Rama. Buddhists believe that the rainbow is the highest state attainable before reaching Nirvana. Irish folk look for the pot of gold hidden at the end of the rainbow by a mischievous leprechaun. In Norse mythology, the rainbow is the bridge between the homes of god and man. And, finally, In the Epic of Gilgamesh, that Sumerian tale of the origins of the earth, as well as of the Great Flood, the rainbow is the jewelled necklace that the Great goddess Mother Ishtar wears. This is particularly significant today because Ishtar/Astarte/Ashtoreth, was the Sumerian/Babylonian/Canaanite goddess of indiscriminate sexual activity, including both non-marital heterosexual and all homosexual unions. The rainbow was Ishtar’s sign. The fact that the rainbow is still used today for groups advocating that kind of activity may thus not be a coincidence. There may be a spiritual force and origin behind those rainbow flags.
For Jews and Christians, though, the rainbow will forever be the sign from God of His covenant berith promise to never again flood the earth. The 7 colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, help us remember that God “remembered” Noah and remembers us. Because of that we can be at peace. God never promised us a life with no difficulties. He does not send the rainbow before storms, but after them. If we think that life will be rosy and perfect because we see a rainbow in the sky before a storm comes, we will be in for a huge disappointment that may result in bitterness toward God and confusion about our life. It is no accident that rainbows come after storms. God will be there for us after we have gone through a personal struggle, a tragedy, a near-death accident, or a difficult storm in life. God is good and He will be with us in the time of trial. That is His promise! Something beautiful and new, a second chance, a new start, a renewed life, awaits those who trust in Him.
