Genesis 7_17-8_5 - The Unfaithful Never Escapes God's Judgement
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Hate speech
9
sentences flagged
Summary
Noah's Flood continues in Genesis 7, where we see the beginning of the end of God's patience with the earth and the judgment of the earth. Noah and his family are in the midst of the worst flood the earth has ever seen, and they are trapped in their boat, the Ark, as the waters continue to rise. God's mercy allows them to get through the flood and the waters begin to recede.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Well, praise God. It's good to be back in Genesis 7, and we're going to get through chapter 8
00:00:12.520
today. Not the whole thing, but I'm going to try to move through this. We continue our journey
00:00:17.760
in the flood, Noah's flood, which is just a fascinating section of Scripture. We saw last
00:00:23.900
week that God's patience had come to an end and the judgment had begun. And we saw that this was
00:00:31.820
a real, historical, catastrophic event with waters bursting up from the earth and waters coming down
00:00:42.780
from the heavens. And it was a scene of what I called a decreation. It was the undoing of Genesis
00:00:49.720
chapter 1. Now, if you remember in the beginning, God separated the waters from above from the
00:00:56.420
waters from below. But here in Genesis chapter 7, we saw that he brought those things back together
00:01:03.460
in judgment. So the flood is really the kind of decreation of the Genesis 1 narrative.
00:01:11.240
Now, we also saw that these waters, they reshaped the earth. It wasn't just this kind of regional
00:01:17.300
reality it was something that was transformative it was likely a large pangea like land mass
00:01:24.340
that the world was shaped and uh was rich with vegetation and the flood with the ground waters
00:01:31.220
bursting out created a fracturing of tectonic magnitude of continents shifting around and
00:01:39.300
massive forests going underwater we saw the coal deposits that the earth essentially
00:01:46.420
coal deposits that are all around the world are essentially giant forests that were ripped
00:01:52.900
and layered under different parts of sediment. And that's why we can retrace the flood back to
00:01:59.420
different parts of the world. And then we ended up by watching the first drops of rain that fell
00:02:06.780
down on the ark and Noah and his family entering in the ark and God shutting the door. And that's
00:02:14.320
where we left off last week. Today, my hope is to move through a significant portion to get all the
00:02:21.440
way from Genesis chapter 7 verse 17 all the way through 8 verse 5. And it's going to cover the
00:02:28.020
height of the flood, not just theologically, but also is speaking to the heights of the waters.
00:02:33.760
It's going to talk about the total judgment of the earth and also the beginning of God's mercies
00:02:38.700
to have the floodwaters to start receding and we start to enter into the time of Noah exiting the
00:02:45.600
ark. And so the emphasis of today's text is really twofold. It's one is the severity of God's wrath.
00:02:52.080
You're going to see that. Number two is the faithfulness of his preservation, that Noah
00:02:57.720
actually survives this. And it's an incredible thing to think about. So let's read verse 17 and
00:03:04.360
18 and chapter 7. It says, the flood continued 40 days on the earth. The waters increased and
00:03:14.740
bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the
00:03:23.540
earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. I want you to imagine just for a moment,
00:03:29.540
you can like, you know, we have this golf course here. Just for a second, imagine out on that golf
00:03:33.240
course, you had like a cruise ship that could hold 300 people and the decks were about 50 feet high.
00:03:41.120
I mean, that's higher than most of those trees out there. And a cruise ship that's about that size
00:03:47.960
is going to weigh somewhere between a million and two million pounds, right? A couple hundred tons.
00:03:54.380
And I want you to imagine how much water would be required to lift that boat up. Just how much
00:04:02.280
water it would take to lift that vessel off of the ground. It's about 30 feet of water to get it
00:04:10.160
up about a few inches off the ground. And so you'd need to have these trees essentially covered.
00:04:17.600
The trees would be covered with water. And that's really just the beginning. You know, Hurricane
00:04:23.000
Katrina a few years ago, it was the highest floodwaters that we had seen in modern history,
00:04:29.320
and it got up to 25 feet in just certain sections of the city. And so, again, as the ark began to
00:04:37.380
be lifted, this was just the beginning of the floodwaters and the depths and the gravity and
00:04:42.760
the magnitude of the flood. It says in verse 19, it says, and the waters prevailed so mightily on
00:04:49.040
the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed
00:04:56.720
above the mountains covering them 15 cubits deep all right um i think i just want to keep pointing
00:05:05.700
out that the the context of the flood narrative continues to project the theory of a regional
00:05:12.840
flood that this wasn't a oh noah's flood there was some sort of a great flood but it was only
00:05:18.000
regional it was only on this continent it wasn't really a global thing it didn't happen everywhere
00:05:22.540
That's a very common theory that's out there even in parts of the church.
00:05:28.660
Now, scientifically, we know that water always finds its level.
00:05:37.540
And so if you have water rising up enough to cover the heights of mountains in one area of the world,
00:05:45.320
even if you argue that those mountains were lower than the mountains that are today,
00:05:49.460
you can't keep that kind of depth confined to one region. No, it's going to level itself out.
00:05:58.140
It would naturally spread across the entire earth. Just, again, consider Hurricane Katrina.
00:06:03.060
You have 20 to 25 feet of water, and it overwhelmed an entire city. Just 20 to 25 feet.
00:06:10.120
Now multiply that to the level of mountaintops. And we're talking at least thousands of feet.
00:06:16.100
thousands of feet of water now add to that the language that you see in the scriptures here
00:06:23.980
it says all the high mountains plural all the high mountains plural under the whole heaven
00:06:31.940
so all of the mountains under all of the sky the heavens right so again you start to you see the
00:06:40.440
comprehensive, not regional language that's being used here. Then there's the ark. Again, if this
00:06:47.940
were local or regional, Noah could have just relocated, right? We talked about this with the
00:06:54.020
birds, right? Why are we putting two kinds of birds on the ark? There are several species of birds that
00:06:59.480
can fly 3,000 miles without stopping. And so it wouldn't make any sense if you could have just
00:07:07.080
migrated somewhere else or if Noah could have just moved somewhere else. No, there was only one way
00:07:13.520
of survival of the judgment to come. It's because the entire earth was to be flooded. Now, the
00:07:18.980
duration also matters. These waters prevailed for months and months, and then they receded slowly,
00:07:26.280
which again doesn't match the structure of a regional flood or a regional narrative. And
00:07:31.940
finally, God's promise is never to flood the earth again. We know that in Genesis chapter 9.
00:07:37.080
God says we see the rainbow. The rainbow is a sign of the promise that God will never flood
00:07:41.660
the earth again. Well, if it's a regional flood and he says we're never going to do that again,
00:07:49.060
that wouldn't be true because there's been regional floods all over the world throughout
00:07:53.180
history and God would essentially be a liar. No, the reality is that there will never be a global
00:07:58.020
flood again. There will never be a flood that catastrophically kills everything as there was
00:08:04.340
in this moment. And so when you take all of this together, it's impossible to read logically
00:08:10.240
that the narrative of the flood is anything else but a universal event. Now, notice that the text
00:08:17.040
says that the waters rose 15 cubits above the highest mountains. Now, 15 cubits is about 22
00:08:23.720
and a half feet. I think that's an interesting measurement. Now, the tallest land animal that
00:08:29.020
we have today is the giraffe. It's about 18 feet. Now, if you're a dinosaur person that believes in
00:08:34.680
the dinosaurs, then I know there's some people that don't. But the dinosaurs, they could have
00:08:38.880
had maybe 20 to 30 feet. What I'm seeing here is that there is, again, an element of justice and
00:08:45.200
judgment that you can't migrate, you can't climb. There is no way that you can get around the flood
00:08:50.640
waters. The entire thing is going up under the water. Now, God's judgment, essentially what this
00:08:59.760
is showing is it's thorough. There's a thorough judgment here. It's left nothing to survive,
00:09:05.520
which is exactly why if you look at verse 21, follow along with me, we're moving quick.
00:09:09.240
It says, and all the flesh died that moved on the earth. Birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming
00:09:20.440
creatures that swarm on the earth and all mankind. Everything on the dry land and whose
00:09:27.580
nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of
00:09:35.000
the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out
00:09:41.620
from the earth. Only Noah was left and those who were with him in the ark and the waters prevailed
00:09:49.420
on the earth 150 days. The totality. Again, when you look about the children's narrative of Noah's
00:09:59.840
ark, you don't really think about this. You kind of just see the smiling animals and the fun boat.
00:10:05.600
This is absolute, total judgment. Pay attention to the words that Moses uses here. He says,
00:10:15.780
all flesh everything every living thing what he's doing is he's stacking phrase upon phrase
00:10:23.380
that no category is left out it's a totality language it includes birds it includes beasts
00:10:29.860
it includes swarming things again if it was regional they could have flown they could have
00:10:35.380
migrated no it's showing that none of those things nothing could escape the floodwaters that were so
00:10:41.420
prevailing on the earth and also look at the language it says that they perished they died
00:10:47.020
they were blotted out these are extreme languages it's underscored that this isn't just death it's
00:10:52.780
judgment it's a judgment upon the earth for it's filled with violence and sin and corruption so
00:11:00.380
god is wiping the earth clear he's wiping it away with sin he's cleansing the world and yet in the
00:11:06.780
the middle of all of this total destruction language, we have this great line at the very
00:11:11.700
end. It says, and only Noah was left. And it sounds, you just think about if everything,
00:11:21.740
every human being, we talked about there was probably hundreds of millions of people on the
00:11:26.160
earth on top of millions and millions of creatures. Everything's dying and only Noah
00:11:33.600
and his family were left. Now, over the years, I've heard a few people make the argument. They
00:11:42.280
take this verse and they connect it to the idea that, see, this, you know, salvation will always
00:11:47.400
be small, right? It's only going to be for few people. You know, there will be few that will be
00:11:53.160
saved and most will perish. It's going to kind of mimic the pattern and structure that we saw in
00:11:58.420
the flood. They often tie it to kind of Jesus's statement, you know, wide is the way that leads
00:12:04.420
to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to life, right? They connect those statements
00:12:09.380
together. But I don't think that's a careful use or a systematic use of redemptive history.
00:12:14.900
And I want to explain that just for a second. Before Christ, salvation was confined. Before
00:12:20.820
Christ, salvation was confined to one nation, to one covenant people. And in this case that we're
00:12:27.400
seen here in Noah's narrative, one family. Salvation is literally limited to one family.
00:12:34.740
Now, so in that sense, it is narrow. In this particular circumstance, it is narrow. But after
00:12:40.520
Christ's resurrection, we see that everything changes. We see everything changes. The dominion
00:12:46.840
of Satan, Satan had dominion over the nations. It's why he was able to offer to Christ in the
00:12:54.160
wilderness, I will give you all of the nations if you just bow down and worship me. There was a sense
00:13:00.020
of authority that Satan had over the nations, and it was essentially when Jesus died on the cross
00:13:07.440
and rose again, he took back that dominion and that authority, which is why in Matthew 28 he says
00:13:13.720
that all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. The authority switches from the
00:13:19.540
devil who lost and is now given to Christ the king. And so he sends the disciples to do what?
00:13:28.580
Well, to go get the nations. So again, we have the Old Testament. We have one nation that's,
00:13:35.120
that salvation is limited to one nation, first to the Jew, then to the Greek. But then in,
0.99
00:13:40.480
after the gospel, we now have that Christ has authority over all the nations and now all of
00:13:45.980
them are his and this is a victorious and it's a good thing now it's why in revelation 11 15 it's
00:13:52.360
speaking to the fall of jerusalem in 70 ad and it's it's talking about the fall of the old covenant
00:13:58.200
era the fall of the old covenant era the old way the temple the sacrifices the priesthood all of
00:14:03.880
that is going away and is being replaced with a new covenant era and in revelation 11 15 we say
00:14:10.640
it every week in our benediction it says the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of
00:14:15.160
our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever. Okay, that's a statement that
00:14:21.340
shows that now as Jerusalem fell, the new covenant era comes in, the power of the gospel, the
00:14:28.880
resurrection, that Jesus is moving into the nations and it says that great statement, the kingdom of
00:14:34.260
the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever
00:14:52.220
This will all kind of wrap up here in a second.
00:14:55.360
it made sense to have a certain degree of pessimism.
00:15:09.220
Everything was going to get worse until Christ was born.
0.86
00:15:15.760
But in the New Covenant, we are called to optimism.
00:15:22.480
We're not called to think that everything is going to get worse and worse.
00:15:24.860
No, we are called to believe that everything is going to get better and better over the centuries.
00:15:29.740
Over the centuries as the church grows and continues to mold and push through the world
00:15:34.940
through the power of the gospel, by the work of the Holy Spirit, by the strength of the word of God.
00:15:41.720
And we know this because, why? Well, because all authority has been given to Christ in heaven and
00:15:47.160
on earth. Because the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
00:15:51.160
Because the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. We know because the leaven of the
00:15:56.760
kingdom of God is going to leaven the entire lump of the world. All of these are promises. And here
00:16:00.940
is the ultra point. This is where I'm getting to. This is very important. My point is this.
00:16:07.740
We must not import old covenant limitations into new covenant promises. We must not import
00:16:16.780
old covenant limitations, the pessimism of the old covenant, the way that they used to live,
00:16:22.360
to the new covenant ideal and structure and vision. No, we are not to be a people without
00:16:28.680
hope we are not to be a people that thinks that oh god is only saving a few no that is the exact
00:16:35.160
opposite jesus goes no we're not just one nation we're getting the whole world save the whole
00:16:41.160
world everybody is going to hear from every tribe nation and tongue are going to come and bow the
00:16:46.600
knee to christ and so the trajectory now is not contraction it's expansion right it's no longer
0.60
00:16:54.760
just Jew. It's Jew and Gentile out into the world. It's every tribe, nation, and tongue. And it's
0.96
00:17:01.420
only the devil who benefits from the idea that it's only going to get worse. When we have the
00:17:05.960
perspective that we think that, oh, only a few. And even that church, you know, that church, I know
00:17:12.220
it's 33% of the world, but you know what? A vast majority of them aren't really believers, right?
00:17:19.320
I know that they confess Christ, but they're not really saved. Okay, that's a lot of the perspective.
00:17:24.760
oh yeah you know no be optimistic be optimistic we know that the church has
00:17:31.080
continued has there been a time in history where the church has gotten smaller
00:17:34.280
no no there was 12 guys and then there was a few hundred and then a few thousand
00:17:41.320
and now we're at a few billion of course because how can the guy who has all authority in heaven
00:17:51.080
and on earth and who is god fail in his work he can't fail he is a victorious king he's the king
00:17:59.420
of kings the lord of lords we can have confidence and hope now i want to show you the absolute
00:18:06.540
intensity of the flood as we get back to our focus here it says the waters prevailed for 150 days
00:18:12.760
that's a lot of time to be in water around water water growing water falling this is a lot
00:18:23.340
of intensity for a long period of time the judgment accomplished its task of cleansing
00:18:30.660
we see in chapter 8 verse 1 it says but God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all
00:18:38.460
the livestock that were with him in the ark, and God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters
00:18:46.640
subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heaven were closed. The rain from the
00:18:54.940
heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days,
00:19:03.380
the waters had abated. And in the seven month of the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to
00:19:11.500
rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month. In the
00:19:19.160
tenth month, on the first day of the month, on the tops of the mountains, on the tops of the mountains
00:19:24.760
were seen. So this passage begins with, again, I think one of the most comforting
00:19:32.280
words that we have in this section of scripture, God remembered Noah. God remembered Noah.
00:19:42.180
I don't know about you, but I often think that God forgets about me. I go, oh Lord, do you not see
00:19:48.040
what's happening in my life right now? I've called out to you. I've reached out to you.
00:19:54.080
I've prayed, are you not hearing me? And so when I hear these phrases that God remembers Noah.
00:20:02.420
Now it's not that God had forgotten Noah, right? It's not that God's, God is omniscient and he
00:20:08.200
doesn't have a struggle with memory. No, it's that he now acts. When the words remember, it's that
00:20:16.620
he's he's moving he's acting in faithfulness to deliver him it's a covenantal language when we
00:20:23.780
see any time that the scriptures say God remembered it doesn't mean that he's forgotten
00:20:29.140
it means um it means that his he's turning his attention to action and he's fulfilling what he
00:20:37.160
has already promised uh let me let me give you an example you see this uh so God remembers Noah
00:20:43.540
he begins to remove the waters. He remembers Abraham and he rescues Lot. He remembers Rachel
00:20:51.180
and then he opens her womb. He remembers his covenant with Israel and takes them out of Egypt.
0.95
00:20:57.660
In every case, it's again, it's not about God coming to memory like I forgot something.
00:21:03.360
It's about movement. It's about God stepping in at the appointed time and fulfilling his covenant
00:21:08.100
promises. And so when the text says that God remembered Noah, what it really means is when
00:21:12.300
god remembers something that's it basically means this it means the season of waiting has now turned
00:21:17.880
into the season of deliverance okay when god remembers you it's like oh the season of waiting
00:21:26.160
of all the prayer of all the frustration of all the suffering of all the time and god has remembered
00:21:33.080
his promise to this particular covenant people it's an end of that season and a season of
00:21:39.720
deliverance is about to come. That's what that means. And this connects directly to the gospel.
00:21:47.600
We actually see this in that God has remembered his people in the sending of his son Christ. We
00:21:53.640
see actually in Luke, John the Baptist's father, Zechariah, and he has this great song of Zechariah
00:21:58.900
that we see after he has been, you know, mute and unable to speak. And he says, he has raised up a
00:22:04.380
horn of salvation for us in the house of the servant of David, as he said through his holy
00:22:09.320
prophets long ago salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us to show mercy to
00:22:14.680
our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant the oath he swore to our forefather abraham and
00:22:23.080
so again it's that he connects the reality of jesus being sent as a remembering i've remembered
00:22:31.240
my people the season of suffering is about to come to an end and the season of deliverance is here
00:22:39.320
and it's here in the birth of Christ, and that is the context. And so in verse 2 of chapter 8,
00:22:47.920
we see the same God who opened the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens has now
00:22:53.060
closed them. So we see this closing. The waters, the growing waters have begun to stop. And then
00:23:01.300
it says the wind, the wind, which is a very important word. We know that spirit in the Hebrew,
00:23:07.920
ruach it's the idea of wind they're very closely connected the wind god sends in genesis 8 2 it
00:23:15.420
echoes the the spirit sent in genesis 1 2 and the spirit is hovering over the waters in genesis
00:23:23.540
chapter 1 verses 2 which signals that there's a split between the waters below and the waters
00:23:28.600
above and here again in genesis 8 2 we see the wind cutting through in the sense that the waters
00:23:34.620
that were kind of thrown together are now again separated. It's again showing us some degree of
00:23:40.240
peace that's occurring. Now, interestingly, the text tells us that the ark came to rest
00:23:46.260
on the mountains of Ararat on the 17th day of the seventh month. Now, there's a fun fact that I
00:23:53.860
didn't know until I studied this week, that later in Exodus chapter 12, God restructures Israel's
00:24:02.920
calendar. So they have a religious calendar of all their feasts and what they were doing.
00:24:06.260
And in Exodus chapter 12, they're getting ready to actually go through the Exodus. They're
00:24:10.740
actually leaving Egypt. And God restructures their calendar. Now, he takes the seventh month,
00:24:19.760
the seventh month, and makes it the first month. Pay attention with me. He takes the seventh month,
00:24:24.860
which is Nisan, and he makes it the first month. And so Israel's year used to begin in the fall.
0.76
00:24:32.320
And now Israel's year is going to begin in the spring.
00:24:40.240
God wanted the entire nation of Israel to have their calendar revolve around their exodus.
0.81
00:24:48.500
So the very beginning of the year would be the start of their year to show,
00:24:53.680
remember that you have been saved from Egypt.
0.97
00:24:56.140
so at the start of their year is now going to be when they were taken out of egypt by the mighty
00:25:04.540
hand of god now from that moment forward every new year every season would begin with their mind of
00:25:11.540
redemption it'd be like january 1st remembering the gospel essentially right it's we have been
00:25:17.100
redeemed that's essentially the structure that we see here and now when you look there's been
00:25:24.100
some great scholars that have done some very fun calculations that have to do with the dates
00:25:27.960
that are going on with Noah's flood and with the calendar adjustment in Exodus chapter 12
00:25:34.640
and with the Israeli calendar that was carried all the way out into Jesus's day.
00:25:41.960
And so it says at the end of, in our text today, it says at the end of 150 days, the waters had
00:25:47.720
abated. And in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains
00:25:52.540
of Ararat. Okay, the day that the ark landed on Ararat is the same day that Christ rose from the
00:26:00.560
dead, if you do the calculations. It's a really fascinating study. It took me like two and a half
00:26:05.720
hours to look at this and to understand what they were trying to say. But essentially,
00:26:11.340
Christ passes through the waters of judgment and he rises on the third day. It's three days after
00:26:18.200
Passover. And in the same way, Noah's ark goes through the waters of judgment and rises on the
00:26:24.700
mountain of the third day after Passover, securing salvation for Noah. So there's a very beautiful
00:26:30.400
connection there. I wish I had more time to go deep into it, but I didn't want to make the whole
00:26:34.940
sermon about that. But you can study that, look into that. It's a fascinating thing. And I love
00:26:39.500
when we see things like this because what it does is it shows God's sovereignty, his providence,
00:26:44.300
his structure, his magnificence, his beauty, and you go, oh man, such incredible connections,
00:26:51.900
such a systematic, coherent God that we serve. Now the waters continue to recede
00:26:58.260
over months until the tops of the mountains appear. And at that time, they had been on the
00:27:06.440
ark for about 224 days. And so just imagine, I don't know what 224 days was, but it was
00:27:14.120
probably around November, I'm thinking. Just imagine you've just been, you know, maybe longer,
00:27:19.620
right? Longer than that. You've just been in the ark for a long time. And all of a sudden, you start
00:27:26.960
to see the tips of the mountains start to recede. Now, as I close here, I think we can learn
00:27:34.600
something from the flood. Something a little bit different that we haven't focused on. The flood,
00:27:38.820
the flood for us is over right it's over right the judgment was laid on christ
00:27:45.700
the new covenant we are like noah right we're standing on the deck of the ark and
00:27:54.680
we're watching the mountains of the new world slowly be revealed that's what we have in the
00:28:02.140
gospel we have this great hope it's like we're standing on the ark we're standing on the edge
00:28:08.720
of the new covenant and we're watching the judgment waters, the fallen world, the plague
00:28:16.140
of sin slowly start to disappear. And we know that because why? Because the resurrection of Christ
00:28:25.700
is more powerful than the fall of Adam. The resurrection of Christ is more powerful than
00:28:30.440
the fall of Adam. What is Christ doing? He is coming to reverse the effects of the fall.
00:28:34.700
that is what's happening we are seeing every day that the church is growing that christ is saving
00:28:40.940
more people that he is conquering his enemies through conversion that more and more people
00:28:45.940
in the world are becoming christian and i know it's difficult to see in times of craziness that
00:28:49.920
are happening all around us but if you zoom out and you realize that christ is winning it's winning
00:28:55.560
over the centuries and slowly slowly we are seeing the waters recede and that the new world
00:29:03.800
is being made. The kingdom of God is being created before our eyes. The storm has passed for us. The
00:29:11.740
wrath of God has been satisfied for us. What was once a sea of condemnation in a fallen world that
00:29:17.300
did not have Christ, we know that has become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.
00:29:24.120
We know that every wave that came that threatened to swallow us fell upon our substitute. It fell
00:29:29.380
upon Jesus. We can think that we were saved in the ark of Christ. And by God remembering the mercy,
00:29:39.440
that God remembered Noah. We know that God remembered you. I don't think God just remembered
00:29:44.260
the church as like a non-individualistic reality. Yes, we are covenant people. We are a covenant
00:29:53.600
church. But God knows the numbers of hairs on your head. He says that Jesus says that he knows
00:30:01.040
his sheep by their names. And so when God remembers Noah, it's an example that he remembers an
00:30:08.420
individual man. And I believe that he could truly say that God remembered you, that God remembered
00:30:16.080
me, that God came and sent a Savior, not just for the church as a whole, but for you and for me.
00:30:25.900
And it's a really beautiful picture that we have a covenant-keeping God, and this world will be
00:30:31.560
made new, and that we're safe, and we can rest in that. Amen? Let's pray. Father, we thank you,
00:30:39.400
Lord, for the blessing of redemption. Lord, that we have seen what you have done in Noah
00:30:45.600
and the redemption. And Lord, that that is a picture and a pattern and a symbol
00:30:49.880
of what we can expect. There will be a day where we will rise from the graves and we will see this
00:30:57.840
new world. And the waters will have all been receded. And the fires will all be done. Lord,
00:31:08.280
and we will rest in a time and a place with no sin and perfect union with you. Lord, we wait and we