The Flood

THE FLOOD

An Exposition of Genesis 7:1-24

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date: June 5, 2022

Series: The Book of Genesis

Note: Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

THE SCRIPTURAL TEXT

I invite you to turn to Genesis, chapter seven, and I'm going to read the whole chapter: Genesis 7:1-24. Holy Scripture says:

¹ Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. ² Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate,³ and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. ⁴ For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”⁵ And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. ⁷ And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. ⁸ Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, ⁹ two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰ And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth.

¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. ¹² And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. ¹³ On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, ¹⁴ they and every beast, according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, according to its kind, and every bird, according to its kind, every winged creature. ¹⁵ They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life.¹⁶ And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in.

¹⁷ The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. ¹⁸ The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. ¹⁹ And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered.²⁰ The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. ²¹ And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind.²² Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. ²³ He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. ²⁴ And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. (Genesis 7:1-24)

This is the word of God and it is for our good. Let's pray:

Father, we thank you for your life-giving, sanctifying, soul-strengthening words. And Father, I pray that as we walk through this passage that you would attune our hearts to what you are saying, to your character, to your plan, to your purpose. Father, we pray that the Holy Spirit would give us insight, the ability to understand and apply your words. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

WALKING THROUGH THE TEXT

What I'd like to do is walk through the passage with fairly large brushstrokes and then draw out some important lessons for us in terms of knowing God and walking faithfully with him.

The boarding process begins (v. 1-5)

In verses 1 through 5, the boarding process begins. Verses 1 through 5 are focused upon a seven-day window one week prior to when the waters of the flood are going to begin. God says in verse four, “For in seven days I will send rain on the earth”. So it makes sense that when you have a family of eight and at least thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of animals of all kinds and sizes to get all of these passengers on board – not for a week long cruise, but they're going to be on the ark for over a year (for 370 days) – when you do all the math, you need a week to do it. You can't just do it on the fly in a few hours. So Noah had been spending the previous years obeying the Lord's instruction to build the ark and to gather and store up the food. So that has been done, right at the end of chapter six: “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.” (Genesis 6:22) Now it's time to begin the boarding process.

“Go into the ark” (v. 1). Looking at verse one, we're reminded once again that the reason that Noah was privileged to have this escape upon the ark was because he was righteous (“you are righteous”, v. 1). That's what the author of Genesis has been telling us all along, that “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8) and that “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6:9) In the end of chapter six, he was obedient. And here again we see in Genesis 7:5 that “Noah did all that the LORD had commanded him.”

One new piece of information that emerges in verses one through five is the instruction to take “seven pairs of all clean animals” (v. 2). Going back to chapter six, all we knew was that there was going to be a pair of every animal, a male and a female, for the purposes of multiplication after the flood. But here we get our first look at this concept of some animals are clean and some are not clean. We don't have a lot of detail here. As we go into further Scripture, we will learn about clean and unclean foods for the Israelites under the Mosaic law. But keep in mind that mankind was not eating animals yet. That is something that would not begin until after the flood. One of the purposes for these clean animals, however Noah came to recognize them, is that they're going to be offered in sacrifice as a means of worshiping God after the flood. You can peek ahead to chapter 8, verse 20: “Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” (Genesis 8:20) In God's economy, some animals, but not all animals, were suitable for worship. And Noah took them on board for worship after the flood subsided.

So the boarding process begins, verses 1 through 5.

All aboard and shut in (v. 6-16)

Now let's go to verses 6 through 16: all aboard and shut in! These verses 6 through 16 focus on one day, the day that the flood began. It says in verse six: “Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth.” It says in verse 10: “After seven days [the seven days that were referenced in verse four] the waters of the flood came upon the earth.”

Verse 11: “In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day” – that is when the flood began. So that's the focus here – what took place on the day when the floodwaters began to come upon the earth.

We're told that Noah was 600 years old. When Noah was 480 years old, if you go back 120 years, that takes us back to chapter six, verse three, when the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” That was a 120-year time marker, when Noah was 480 years old. And the flood was going to come, this destruction was going to come, in 120 years when Noah was 600.

When Noah was 500 years old, as we learn at the end of chapter five, he began to have sons. And over the course of presumably a few years, he had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth (Genesis 5:32).

Five years earlier (that is, five years before the flood), when Noah was 595 years old, his father Lamech died (Genesis 5:28-31). And he was probably in the process of building the ark at that time when his father died.

It says in chapter 7, verses 7 through 9 and again in verses 13 through 16, that all of the designated passengers, Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives and all of the appointed representative animals, they all went into the ark. It is very fascinating to me that it says twice, look at verse nine, it says that these animals – at the end of verse nine – “went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah.” Similarly in verse 16: “those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him.” Isn't that interesting? Noah was God's appointed man, the leader and facilitator and deliverer, so to speak, God's representative. And God commanded Noah and Noah obeyed the Lord's command. And in consequence of that, the animals came and they boarded the ark. They were, in a very real sense, under Noah's care. They were with him and they benefited from God's gracious work in and through Noah for the good of these animals.

And then look at the end of verse 16, it says: And the LORD shut him in.” After a seven-day process of boarding the ark, and then Noah's family members and then Noah himself getting onto the ark finally for the last time, they weren’t going to come out again. Now the Lord is the one who shut Noah in. Again the emphasis is on Noah as God's appointed representative and leader here.

“[The] LORD shut him in.” It highlights the fact that this salvation that God was providing for Noah and Noah's family was God's idea, not Noah's idea. It wasn't Noah's idea to build the ark. It wasn't Noah's idea to come up with some creative strategy to withstand the judgment of the flood. It wasn't Noah's idea. It was all God's idea, God's grace, God's proactivity to preserve his faithful servant Noah. And so, Noah had obeyed the Lord to go into the ark. But once into the ark, it was not for Noah to shut the door. It was for the Lord to secure and seal and make it very clear that Noah was right where God wanted him to be, in the Lord's safe keeping. And the Lord would be with Noah and watch over him and all those who were with within the ark for the next 370 days.

The waters flood the earth (v. 7-14)

Now let's move to verses 17 through 24. Although I'm going to go back to an important detail in verse 11 in just a moment. But to summarize verses 17 through 24, it's very simple: the waters flooded the earth and everything died. This very obviously is the emphasis of these last eight verses, it says that the flood continued 40 days on the earth. The emphasis here is on the 40 days and then another 110 days, for a total of 150 days or five months.

When the waters of judgment prevailed upon the earth, where did these waters come from? Go back to verse 11. In the middle of verse 11, referring to the time when the flood started, it says “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.” There were two sources of floodwater. And it takes us right back to Genesis chapter one. I mean, water, even in small amounts, is a powerful force. And of course, here we're dealing with incalculable volumes of water. But when you go back to Genesis 1:2, after God had created the raw material of heaven and earth, what was the earth like? The earth was covered in water, kind of a murky, watery-ness covered the earth. And how did God go about creating a habitable world? He did something with the waters, right? It says in verse six of chapter one, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” (Genesis 1:6) So now you have the atmospheric waters up there and the earthy waters down here. And then in a subsequent act of fashioning, the Lord takes the waters below and puts them into seas and rivers, and the dry land appears, and that becomes the basis for habitable life on planet Earth.

And water is essential to life in so many different ways. But a lot of water, as you know, a lot of water is very dangerous. The sea in the Bible is sometimes a metaphor for that which is chaotic and dangerous and dark. For good reason, the disciples were afraid for their lives when they were on the stormy sea on the Sea of Galilee – “Master, we are perishing” they cried out. But what's important to realize is that in order for life to flourish on Earth, we must have the waters remaining in their proper boundaried location. We need the waters up there to stay up there. We need the waters down here to stay separate from the habitable land area. And any kind of interchange or any kind of water processes like condensation and precipitation and collection and evaporation, any kind of interchange needs to be very measured and controlled.

But what does God do in the judgment of chapter seven? What he does is he lets  go the boundaries. He lets go all restraints. And the waters below, not even referring to like the ocean and river waters per se, but the subterranean waters. There's a lot of water down there, you know that, wells and springs. There's a lot of water under the earth. And God caused it to burst forth, and the floodwaters came up from below. And then in terms of the waters above, the Lord took away all restraint there, and it just started to pour rain incessantly for 40 days and 40 nights. And so you can imagine how much water that is. Again, it's incalculable.

And the emphasis is how these waters overwhelmed the earth. And for good reason. Because what had been overwhelming the earth prior to the judgment? What had been overwhelming the earth was wickedness, right? Chapter six, verse five: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” What's God's answer to that? Verse 17 of chapter 7: “The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased”. Verse 18: “The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth”. Verse 19: “And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep” – about maybe 22, 23 feet deep. Verse 24: “And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.” For far too long, wickedness had prevailed upon the earth. And now the judgment of God, through the means of destructive water, overwhelmed the earth and prevailed upon it.

And sandwiched right in between all of this emphasis on the waters prevailing on the earth, we have the intended effect, right? Verse 21: “all flesh died”. First and last word of verse 22: “Everything… died.” Verse 22 says, “Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.” And lest anyone think that this was just a natural occurrence, it was not a natural occurrence. It was directly and clearly the intent from the Lord God Almighty. As verse 23 says, “He [the Lord God] blotted out every living thing”. This was an act of personal and direct judgment from the hand of Almighty God.

And middle of verse 23 and near the end of verse 23: “Only Noah was left”. While the waters overwhelmed the earth, the ark rose high above the earth – above the waters, safe and sound. “Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.” (v. 23) It's interesting thinking about Genesis chapter 7 and what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. He talked about the wise man. And the “wise man… built his house on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24) And Noah had built his life – and literally built the ark – on the basis of the words of God. That's Jesus’ point. The wise man who builds his house on the rock is like a man who hears the words of the Lord and does them, puts them into practice (Matthew 7:24). That's what Noah did. And when the floods came and beat against that house that Noah had built, Noah was safe (Matthew 7:25). Everyone else, except for Noah and his family members, everyone else had basically built their life upon the sand (Matthew 7:26). They had built their life on something other than the words of God. They didn't trust God. They didn't live obediently in response to his words. And therefore, when the floods came, they were swept away. (Matthew 7:27)

FOUR LESSONS

I want to call your attention to three things that this passage teaches us about God, and then one thing that this passage teaches us in terms of our own need to be spiritually ready for the Lord's return. Let me begin with the three lessons about God.

God is faithful

First, God is faithful. He says what he means, he means what he says, and he does what he says.

He said back in chapter six, he told Noah, “I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven.” (Genesis 6:17) And he did. Near the beginning of chapter seven, he said, “in seven days I will send rain on the earth” (Genesis 7:4). And in seven days, he did. The Lord told Noah that Noah and his wife and his children and their wives were going to come into the ark. And they did. God is faithful. He keeps his words. And we shouldn't treat God's words lightly. We shouldn't twist them. We shouldn't think that God's words are our fodder for creative reinterpretation. We are to humble ourselves and tremble at the words of God and realize that he means business and he is faithful to do what he says.

God has sovereign authority over all things

The second lesson about God is that God has sovereign authority over all things and he can do whatever he wants with anything at any time.

We live in sentimental times, tolerant times. If our society wants to think about God at all, we want to think about him in very benign terms, you know, perpetually forbearing and gracious and compassionate and nonjudgmental. People don't really understand those concepts very well. And this idea that God would take a world and destroy it – a lot of people out there, your neighbors, friends, coworkers, a lot of them do not have a conception of God in which that makes sense. But we need to have this firm conviction that God is sovereign over everything. And precisely because he is the Creator and Sustainer of all things, he holds sovereign rights over everything. He can dispose of anything at any time, in any way he chooses, and does no wrong ever. He is faithful and he is righteous, and he is wise in all that he does. And he is answerable to no one.

Now it's true, of course, that God will never act contrary to his own character, and he will always keep his word, which is good news for those who hear and believe and treasure and do his words. But we need to understand that God's character includes righteousness, holiness, judgment. If he wants to make a world such as he did in Genesis chapter one, he makes it. If he wants to undo that world, turn that world upside down, send it into oblivion, and make a new world out of it, he does. He is sovereign. He is God.

God punishes the wicked and preserves the righteous

The third lesson is that God punishes the wicked and preserves the righteous. This is a principle that is taught in Scripture over and over and over again. In fact, I'm going to read to you some selections from the Psalms. I just want you to listen to them, and I want you to listen to them in light of what we have just learned about from Genesis chapter seven. Let me turn some pages here. All right. Just listen to these. These are all from the Psalms:

• “The LORD preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.” (Psalm 31:23)

• “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD.” (Psalm 32:10)

• “The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.” (Psalm 34:15-16)

• “For the LORD loves justice; he will not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off.” (Psalm 37:28)

• “Mark the blameless and behold the upright [sounds like Noah, doesn’t it?], for there is a future for the man of peace. But transgressors shall be altogether destroyed; the future of the wicked shall be cut off.” (Psalm 37:37-38)

• “For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.” (Psalm 73:27-28)

• “The LORD preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.” (Psalm 145:20)

And finally, a familiar one from the very first Psalm, the end of Psalm 1:

• “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” (Psalm 1:5-6)

The Lord watches over, smiles upon, protects, preserves, secures “the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

What happens in Genesis chapter seven with Noah and his family members inside the ark and everyone else being destroyed and blotted out who are outside the ark? What happens is a perfect illustration of all of those passages.

So, number one, God is faithful. Number two, God has sovereign authority over all things. Number three, God punishes the wicked, but preserves and upholds and saves the righteous.

Be prepared for the future day of judgment

And that leads me to one final and very important application for our spiritual lives. And the word I want to use to start off with here is preparedness. We understand the concept of preparedness, right? Emergency preparedness or military preparedness for a nation, or financial preparedness for a recession or for retirement. We want to be prepared.

And one of the New Testament lessons that is drawn from Genesis chapter seven is that there is a future day coming that is not going to be merely a temporal, this worldly judgment in the way that the flood was, but there's going to be a final judgment upon mankind. And the question is, what does it mean to be prepared for that day? What did it mean for Noah to be prepared for that day when the flood waters came upon the earth? And what does it mean for us to be prepared for that day when the Lord returns?

And there's a lesson right here in Genesis chapter seven that Jesus picks up on in Matthew chapter 24. I'm going to invite you to turn to Matthew chapter 24, then I'll come back to Noah. Turn to Matthew chapter 24.

Some people, some people very well intended, will say things like, the way to be prepared for the Lord's return is to make sure that at some time in the distant past you prayed to receive Christ. And if you did that at some time in the past, regardless of the state of your heart and how you have been living for the last 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 years, as long as you have done that, as long as you have prayed the prayer or walked an aisle or raised the hand or gotten baptized or joined a church, as long as you have done that sometime in the past, then you're prepared. But that's not what Jesus teaches, and that's not the example that Noah establishes for us in Genesis chapter 7.

So look at Matthew chapter 24 beginning in verse 36. I want to be prepared, and I want you to be prepared. So let's just get a big picture view here of what Jesus is teaching. He says starting in verse 36 of Matthew 24:

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 24:36-50)

According to Jesus, being ready for his coming doesn't mean that at some time in the distant past you prayed a prayer or walked an aisle or made a commitment. It's that you have an ongoing trusting relationship in the Lord that demonstrates itself in an attentiveness to the Lord. You're awake, you're alert, and you are faithful, doing his will, doing the Master's will. That's what it means to be ready.

And to not be ready: I'm not talking about our struggles with sin and the ups and downs of that,I'm talking about a life that is simply in no recognizable form walking with God and striving to live holy and honorably before Him – that kind of life demonstrates that you're not trusting in the Lord, that you don't have a saving union with Jesus Christ, and that you are not ready.

But I just want you to think about how Noah. Noah illustrates very well what Jesus is teaching, that the way to be ready for the Day of judgment, the way to be ready for the Lord's return, is to be alert and obedient and faithful every day. So go back to Genesis 7, and this is where I want to close.

Was Noah ready for the day when the floodwwaters began to come upon the earth? Yes, he was ready. And it's very clear in the text that the reason that he was ready was because he was walking in obedience to the Lord. The fact that maybe two or three or 400 years ago – Noah was an old man compared to us – the fact that two or three or 400 years ago he prayed a prayer, made a commitment, doesn't make him ready. What made him ready for the Day of Judgment was that he was walking in obedience to the Lord. And it's really interesting when you look at chapter seven, verse one, where it says: “Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark.”” The very fact that there is an ark ready to go into is an illustration of the fact that Noah had walked in obedience, because Noah built the ark! If Noah had been asleep at the wheel, if Noah had not been faithfully attending to the building of the ark and the gathering of food over the past several years, perhaps even decades, then when God came to him one week before the flood was going to start, there wouldn't have been time. No way Noah's going to build an ark in one week. The obedience of the final week leading up to the Day of Judgment would have been impossible unless it had been preceded by years of obedience.

And it would have done no good for Noah to attempt obedience the final week if he had been disobedient in the previous years. All this stands forth as a testimony to the fact that when the Lord calls us into right relationship with himself, when we find favor and grace in the eyes of the Lord, when the Lord brings us into that kind of relationship – which is a free gift, it cannot be earned – when we come into that relationship, he puts us on a path of obedience. He puts us on a path of faithfulness. He puts us on a path of service. And that path, that pathway of obedience and service and faith, faithfulness and love, and doing your Master's will, that is the pathway to final glory. I loved to talk about that when we walked through Paul's letter to the Philippians, and now here in Genesis 7 and Matthew 24, I get to say it again. It's wonderful. If you are his, his will is that you walk with him each day, that you are attentive.

Noah was attentive to the next instructions because he had been faithful to the previous instructions. And whatever day the Lord may come, morning or evening, today or tomorrow, you want to be found faithful. You want to be found doing the very things that the Lord has given you to do.

Let's pray:

Father, I pray that your words would govern our lives. I pray that your words would find a soft and receptive and teachable spirit within our hearts. I pray that we would be able to hear this instruction without the poison of legalism and without the poison of earning, without the poison of fleshly efforts. This is all grace. This is all the work of God in the hearts of his people. The very commands are grace, that you would put us on the path of life, the path of fruitfulness. So Father, I pray that you would protect hearts from hearing this instruction in the wrong way and help us to go ever deeper in the grace of God and bearing fruit for your glory. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.