Tawa Baptist

The Olive Tree

Scripture: Zechariah 4

Video Link: https://youtu.be/Vs_KEWMjnfM

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Have you noticed how much the price of olive oil has increased lately. A couple of years ago you could buy one litre of olive oil for around $10 or $12. Now it costs nearly twice that or even more for some brands. The reason for the increase seems to be a shortage in global supply due to climate change. 

Olive oil is still worth using though, if you can afford it. Scientists tell us that olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fatty acids which help to reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering bad cholesterol and raising good cholesterol.

As well as being good for your heart, olive oil also contains antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds. Plus, it tastes good in cooking.

Today we continue our Testimony of Trees series by focusing on the Olive Tree. The Olive Tree is mentioned throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. This comes as no surprise given it was widely cultivated in the ancient near east.

Perhaps the most famous reference to olive trees is found in the gospels where we read that Jesus often retreated to the Mount of Olives (when he was near Jerusalem) to spend time in prayer and teaching his disciples.  

Our message this morning though focuses on Zechariah chapter 4, which describes a vision the prophet Zechariah had of a lampstand holding seven lamps fed by the oil from two olive trees.

Zechariah 4

From Zechariah chapter 4, verse 1 we read…   

Then the angel who talked with me returned and woke me up, like someone awakened from sleep. 2 He asked me, “What do you see?” I answered, “I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and seven lamps on it, with seven channels to the lamps. 3 Also there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.” 4 I asked the angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?”

5 He answered, “Do you not know what these are?” “No, my lord,” I replied.

6 So he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty. 7 “What are you, mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it! God bless it!’”

8 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 9 “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple; his hands will also complete it. Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you.

10 “Who dares despise the day of small things, since the seven eyes of the Lord that range throughout the earth will rejoice when they see the chosen capstonein the hand of Zerubbabel?”

11 Then I asked the angel, “What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand?” 12 Again I asked him, “What are these two olive branches beside the two gold pipes that pour out golden oil?”

13 He replied, “Do you not know what these are?” “No, my lord,” I said. 14 So he said, “These are the two who are anointed toserve the Lord of all the earth.”

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

Olive trees are self-sterile, which means they cannot produce fruit on their own. They need another compatible tree close by for pollination.

The other thing olive trees need to be fruitful is lots of light. If you let an olive tree grow wild, the foliage gets quite dense, and you won’t get much fruit from the tree because the leaves and branches block out the light.

The Italians say you should prune an olive tree so a bird can fly through it. That way, the tree gets the light it needs to bear fruit.

People are a bit like olive trees in some ways. We need lots of light and we cannot be fruitful on our own. We need the right people alongside us if we are going to be fruitful.

However, we are not like olive trees in every way. A human being might live around 70 to 80 years on average, whereas an olive tree can live for as long as two or three thousand years. Olive trees are pretty resilient. They bear witness to human history through long periods of time.

Zechariah was born in exile in Babylonia and migrated back to Jerusalem as a young man. He was from a priestly family. Zechariah prophesied around 520 years before Christ, about the same time as the prophet Haggai. 

At that point the temple built by Solomon lay in ruins and the people’s morale was low. Zechariah and Haggai encouraged the returning exiles and their leaders to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Zechariah chapter 4, which we heard earlier, retells one of the visions Zechariah received from the angel of the Lord.

In verse 1 of Zechariah 4, the prophet describes what it was like when the angel of the Lord came to him. It was like being woken from sleep. I don’t think that Zechariah was physically asleep. It’s more like the angel was waking Zechariah up to spiritual realities.

In his letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul talks about how our vision of spiritual reality is incomplete in this life. Paul writes: 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

There is more to the picture than meets the eye. We don’t know what we don’t know. Each of us are, in a sense, sleepwalking through this life, spiritually speaking. Without God to reveal the truth to us, we are stumbling in the dark, not fully conscious.   

In the vision, the angel shows Zechariah a golden lampstand with seven lamps on it. The seven lamps in the vision receive an unending supply of olive oil from two olive trees either side of the lampstand.

On hearing of a gold lampstand, an ancient Hebrew listener would most likely think of the holy place in God’s temple, which had a golden lampstand. The lampstand didn’t hold candles like we might imagine today. Rather it had seven lamps fueled by olive oil. (There was no electricity in Biblical times.)

The number seven has special significance in the Bible. Seven is the proverbial number of wholeness or completion. A set of seven is a perfect set. The Sabbath is the seventh day, a holy day set apart for the Lord.

So, what we have here (with the vision of a gold lampstand and seven lamps) is a highly valuable, holy light that never goes out.   

Basically, the lampstand with its seven lights represents the witness of God’s people in the world.[1] The lampstand symbolizes both the fixed physical witness of the temple building and the dynamic relational witness of the Jewish community. God’s faithful people worshipping together are a light for the world.

In the book of Revelation, the apostle John borrows this metaphor of lampstands as a picture for the witness of God’s people in the world.

John presents the seven Christian churches of the first century as seven lampstands in a dark world.

From an earthly perspective the people of God feel poor and weak, vulnerable and despondent. They are living in relative poverty and life is difficult. But from a heavenly perspective they are highly valued and resilient. The witness of their light will never go out.  

Zechariah doesn’t ask about the meaning of the lampstand. The lampstand does not seem strange to him. He is more puzzled by the two olive trees and the oil they produce. Although the temple doors were made out of olive wood, the holy place in God’s temple did not have two living olive trees in it.

Zechariah asks the angel about the olive trees, and the angel replies by saying…

“This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

Zerubbabel was the governor of Jerusalem during the time of Zechariah.

The Persians, who were the dominant world power at that stage, had put Zerubbabel in charge. Interestingly, Zerubbabel was a direct descendant of king David. He was royalty.

Often, we hear the prophets confronting the leadership of the land, telling them to change their wicked ways. Last week, for example, we heard how Amos had a message of judgement for Jeroboam the king of Israel and Amaziah the priest at Bethel.

But the Jewish leadership of Zechariah’s day were not the same as the leadership of Amos’ day. Zechariah has not been charged with giving Zerubbabel a telling off. Quite the opposite. God wants to encourage Zerubbabel to get on with finishing the rebuild of the Jerusalem temple.

However, they would not complete the temple by human might or power.

In other words, they would not accomplish this task like Solomon did, with an army of workers or by applying political pressure or heavy taxation.

The completion of the temple would be resourced by God’s Spirit, the same life-giving breath of God that was present at the creation of the cosmos. Indeed, the rebuilding of the temple signifies a new creation, a new beginning for the people of Israel.

The oil from the olive trees, therefore, is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit would keep the lights on. The Holy Spirit would enable the returning exiles to complete the temple under the leadership of Zerubbabel.

The angel of the Lord continues his message for Zerubbabel in verse 7 saying:

7 “What are you, mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground…” 

The returning exiles were facing opposition to the rebuilding of the temple, and they were overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. From an earthly perspective, the obstacles in front of them felt like a mountain to move. Heavy. Impossible. That’s why the building work had stalled.

But from a heavenly perspective, the mighty mountain of obstacles is nothing, for Zerubbabel is empowered by the Spirit of God. What is a mountain to God’s Spirit. The Spirit of God is wise and powerful. Nothing is too difficult for God.

Did Jesus have Zechariah 4 in mind when he told his disciples they could move mountains with faith the size of a mustard seed? Perhaps he did. Because it’s not the size of our faith that matters. It’s the power of God’s Spirit that moves obstacles. Faith is the key which releases the power.

The capstone mentioned at the end of verse 7 is the final stone of the building project. This is a message of hope. The angel of the Lord is saying, Zerubbabel will put the finishing touches on the new temple, with the blessing and support of the people.

In verses 8-9 Zechariah gets another word from the Lord. It’s the same message just said more plainly. Zerubbabel will complete the temple rebuild. Zechariah’s prophecy was fulfilled about four or five years later. The second Jerusalem temple was dedicated around 516 or 515 BC.

Verse 10 addresses a concern. The newly restored temple was not as grand or glorious as the temple Solomon had built. For some the new temple was underwhelming. It was a case of reality falling well short of expectation.

But the angel of the Lord won’t have any disappointment, saying..

“Who dares despise the day of small things, since the seven eyes of the Lord that range throughout the earth will rejoice when they see the chosen capstonein the hand of Zerubbabel?”

The ‘seven eyes of the Lord’ is not to be taken literally. It’s a proverbial way of saying God sees everything that happens around the world. God is all knowing in other words. Basically, from an earthly point of view the new temple might not look like much but from a heavenly point of view, it is a cause for great joy.

Of all the majestic and wonderful things the Lord sees around the world, this new temple makes God happy (even if it is small in comparison to the first temple).  

The word to not despise the day of small things reminds us of Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed, which we heard about a couple of weeks ago. Jesus said…

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”   

Thinking of small things also brings to mind Genesis 8. After the flood, Noah (who was still in the ark) sent out a dove to test whether the waters had gone down. At first the dove came back emptied handed. But seven days later when Noah sent the dove out again, the bird returned with an olive leaf in its beak.

An olive leaf is small but that small leaf carried a great deal of hope for those on the ark. That olive leaf was a sign that the waters had subsided and God was making all things new.    

Zechariah is still unclear about the meaning of the two olive trees, so he asks the angel again in verse 11, “What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand?” And the angel replies…

“These are the two who are anointed toserve the Lord of all the earth.”

To be anointed by God is to be chosen for special service, perhaps as a king or a prophet or a priest. The Hebrew word for ‘anointed one’ is Messiah and the Greek word is Christ. The Lord anointed a number of people for special service in the Old Testament.

Most likely, in the historical context of Zechariah 4, the two olive trees signify Zerubbabel and Joshua, two men chosen by God to lead his people at that time. Zerubbabel, as we’ve just heard, was the governor of Jerusalem and a descendant of David, while Joshua was the high priest.

(Please note: this Joshua is not to be confused with the Joshua who was Moses’ assistant centuries earlier.)    

In other parts of the Bible (like, Jeremiah 11, Romans 11 and Revelation 11) the olive tree is a metaphor for the people of God collectively.

Here, in Zechariah 4, the two olive trees together with the lampstand are representative of God’s people. The olive trees are intimately connected to the lampstand. Neither can serve God’s purpose without the other.

Joyce Baldwin puts it all together for us…

“Joshua and Zerubbabel wait on the unseen Lord, who is the source of their authority and power. They in turn give themselves to build both the temple and the community; by daily life and worship the whole people is to be a light to others. The city on a hill cannot be hid.” [2] 

Or to say it another way, Zerubbabel and Joshua (the co-leaders of Israel) act as conduits for the oil of God’s Spirit, empowering the people to be a strong witness, an enduring light, to the nations. 

Zerubbabel and Joshua are examples of servant leaders. They don’t bully the people or hold them to ransom. They lead with humility and in a way that sustains the people of God to continue in their witness.

Zerubbabel and Joshua point to Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate anointed one, the perfect Messiah. Jesus is Servant King and High Priest all in one.

Conclusion:

So how does Zechariah’s vision of the lampstand and the twin olive trees apply to us today?

Well, part of our purpose as a church (as God’s people in this place) is to bear witness to Christ in the world. (Our vision statement is literally ‘Christ in community’.) As Jesus said to his disciples: you are the light of the world. Among other things this means we are Jesus’ witnesses in the world.

We bear witness to Christ. Light is a complete contrast to darkness. Therefore, to be Jesus’ witnesses means to be distinctive in a good way, in a way that reveals the truth and casts out fear. We are to be in the world but not like the world.

Tawa Baptist is not the whole lampstand here in this place, but we are one of the seven lamps on the lampstand, together with the other churches in Tawa.

Our church building and our congregation is not big or impressive.

By comparison with years gone by, we are perhaps a little underwhelming. 

But who dares despise our smallness. The Lord delights in faithfulness.

The task of being Jesus’ witnesses in this world may feel overwhelming at times, particularly as the church in New Zealand becomes more and more marginalised. But we don’t need to worry about the waxing and waning of society’s attitude to the church. We can’t control that.

Our part is to stay connected to Jesus, to abide in him. For Jesus is our olive tree. Jesus is the one anointed by God to lead us and feed our lamp with the oil of his Spirit.

Let us pray…

Gracious God, we thank you for Jesus who sustains our light by your Spirit. Help us to remain faithful witnesses for you, together in this place. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

  1. What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
  2. What are some of the characteristics and uses of the olive tree?
  3. What does the golden lampstand in Zechariah 4 represent? What is its significance?
  4. What do the olive trees in Zechariah 4 represent? What does the oil of the trees signify?
  5. Discuss / reflect on the words: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty. Why does God say this to Zerubbabel? What might God be saying to you (or us) with these words?   
  6. How does Zechariah’s vision of the lampstand and the twin olive trees apply to us today? How might we let our light shine? How might we remain in the world but distinctive from it? How might we bear witness to Jesus? 
  7. What connections do you see between Zechariah 4 and the teaching of Jesus?

[1] Refer Joyce Baldwin’s commentary on Zechariah, page 124.

[2] Refer Joyce Baldwin’s commentary on Zechariah, page 124.

Tawa Baptist

Doves

Scripture: Luke 3:21-22

Video Link: https://youtu.be/jlZNgPtC1rk

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Doves in the Old Testament
  • Doves in the New Testament
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Scientists estimate there are somewhere between ten and eleven thousand different species of birds in the world today. In total there are thought be at least 50 billion wild birds on the planet, perhaps more. Which means that birds outnumber human beings by six to one. That could be a worry if birds ever got organized. 

The Bible mentions around 25 different species of birds, including various types of owls, the eagle, sparrows, ravens, roosters, the ostrich, the hawk and so on. In fact, birds are referred to over 300 times in the Bible, which seems like quite a lot.

Today we begin a new sermon series called, ‘Birds of the Bible’. I don’t think we will try to cover all 25 species of birds, much less every verse that talks about a bird. But it might be interesting to consider what some of the bird references reveal about the character of God. After all, birds were God’s idea. We start our series this morning with the Dove.

Doves in the Old Testament:

One of the first references to a dove in the Bible is found in Genesis 8, which tells the story of Noah and the great flood. While Noah and his family and all the animals and birds were still floating in the ark, Noah sent out a dove to see if the water had receded. The dove came back because it couldn’t find a place to rest.

Verse 9 of Genesis 8, adds a rather beautiful detail saying, “Noah reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back into the ark”.

Not many birds would land on a man’s hand like that. That speaks to me of a certain closeness and trust between Noah and the dove.

Noah waited seven days before sending the dove out again. This time it returned with an olive branch in its beak, indicating the waters were receding. After another week, Noah sent the dove out once more but this time it did not return so Noah knew it was safe to leave the ark.

The image of a dove over the waters reminds us of the Holy Spirit hovering over the primordial waters, when God created the cosmos. It speaks of a new creation. It also speaks of peace after the storm. A fresh start.

Doves were used by the ancient Israelites as a sacrifice. In particular, they were the sacrifice of the poor. If someone needed to make atonement for something, but could not afford to offer a lamb or a goat, then they could offer two doves instead.

We read for example, in Luke 2, how Mary & Joseph presented the baby Jesus to the Lord at the temple in Jerusalem and offered two doves in keeping with the Law.

So, as well as signifying peace and new beginnings, doves point to God’s consideration for the poor. God does not want people to be excluded from worship by a lack of finances.

Doves often mate for life. They are loyal, not promiscuous and so doves are associated with love and devotion. Also beauty. They are a pretty bird.

Perhaps the most intimate book in the Bible is a love poem called the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs refers to doves as a metaphor for beauty…

How beautiful you are, my darling. Your eyes are doves. (1:15)

My lover is knocking: Open to me, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. (5:2)

My dove, my perfect one, is unique. (6:9)

Some think the Song of Songs is an allegory of God’s love for his people or of Christ’s love for the church, a love that is reciprocated. Whichever way you might read it, there is a palpable tenderness and intimacy in the language.

As beautiful as they are, the cooing of doves sounds sad, like crying or moaning.

In the 1980’s the musician, Prince, wrote a song titled, When Doves Cry. It was a song of lament. ‘How can you just leave me standing, alone in a world that’s so cold… Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when doves cry.’

The crying doves in the song are a metaphor for two lovers mourning the loss of their relationship.

In Isaiah 38 we read how king Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. When he cried out to the Lord in tears, God healed him and added another 15 years to his life. Afterwards, Hezekiah wrote a song remembering his ordeal. In verse 14 of Isaiah 38 we read…

I cried like a swift or thrush, I moaned like a mourning dove. My eyes grew weak as I looked to the heavens. I am troubled; O Lord, come to my aid.

Moaning like a dove, in sadness and regret, was also used to describe those who survived the fall of Jerusalem. In Ezekiel 7 we read…

All who survive and escape will be in the mountains, moaning like doves…, each because of his sins.

So doves, in the Bible, are associated with mourning and grief. This fits with the idea that doves represent a new beginning. “Every new beginning starts with some other beginning’s end.” I imagine Noah and his family felt some grief after the flood, thinking of all that had been lost, much like the Jewish survivors after the fall of Jerusalem. 

Many of you will be familiar with the story of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet who ran away from God. He was swallowed by a huge fish and then spewed up on a beach. Jonah ran away because God wanted him to preach a message of repentance to his enemies the Assyrians.

Eventually, after three days in a fish, Jonah did what God asked him. He told the people of Nineveh that God was going to destroy their city. No sugar coating it. The people of Nineveh believed Jonah’s message and repented in dust and ashes, so God had mercy and spared the city.

Jonah was not happy with this. He wanted God to smote his enemies but the Lord had mercy saying: Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?

You might be thinking, ‘Yea, I know the story but what has that got to do with doves?’ Well, as it happens, Jonah’s name in Hebrew means ‘Dove’. So when we think of doves we think of the story of Jonah and the God of mercy who gives second chances.

The Lord gave Jonah a second chance and he gave Nineveh a second chance too. Just as he gives each of us a second and third and fourth chance. The Lord is slow to anger and rich in love.

Doves in the New Testament:

Today is Trinity Sunday, a week after Pentecost. One of the traditional readings for Trinity Sunday is the account of Jesus’ baptism. From Luke 3 we read…

21 When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Many people see the Trinity (Father, Son & Spirit) depicted in this narrative, with the voice from heaven being that of God the Father.

We might also see in this passage a picture of heaven coming to earth, a kind of glimpse of the future, when God’s kingdom is realized in its fullness. As the Lord taught us to pray: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

The other thing that is happening in Christ’s baptism is that Jesus is representing the human race. You see, Jesus is without sin and so he does not need to be baptized for himself. Jesus is being baptized for us. He is identifying with human beings and representing humanity to God.

This means the baptism of Jesus is not only a picture of the communion of the Father, Son & Spirit; it is also a picture of the communion (or holy intimacy) that we (who belong to Christ) will enjoy with God, when Jesus returns and heaven comes to earth.

In other words, the Trinity are not having their own private huddle in Luke 3. At Jesus’ baptism, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are having an intimate moment with humanity, in Christ. In and through Jesus, humanity gets to participate in the Trinity.

When the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus, he was also descending on all those who are in Christ. Likewise, when we are baptized into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we become God’s sons and daughters, his family. The Father loves you and is pleased with you.

It is a curious thing that Luke only allows two verses to describe Jesus’ baptism. Given the importance of the event we might have expected a whole chapter at least. But we get just a brief glimpse. Sometimes less is more.

The Holy Spirit could have descended on Jesus in any form. A bear, a lion, a stag, a waterfall, tongues of fire or some kind of mysterious symbol. Yet the Spirit chose the form of a dove on this occasion. Why? Because the dove is like a master key unlocking the meaning of what Jesus came to do.  

For those who are familiar with the Old Testament, the mention of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove, immediately evokes all the images we might associate with doves from the rest of the Bible.

To begin with, Jesus is like Noah. Or more accurately, Noah points to Christ. Noah and Jesus were both carpenters. Noah and Jesus were both righteous. Noah and Jesus were both instrumental in the salvation of the world.

To be ‘in Christ’ is like being in the ark of salvation that Jesus built. In and through Jesus, God is bringing about a new creation, a fresh start for everything God made, not just human beings.

Although Noah points to Christ, Jesus is greater than Noah. Jesus brings peace between God and humankind. Jesus calms the storm of judgement. Something Noah could not do.

Remember the way the dove landed on Noah’s hand. That speaks of the closeness and trust which characterizes our relationship with God through Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to trust Jesus and be close to him.

As we have heard, the meaning of the dove has even greater riches to share. Just as the dove was the chosen sacrifice of the poor, so too Jesus is our atoning sacrifice restoring our relationship with God. Jesus is good news to rich and poor alike, because Jesus takes away the sin of the world.

The picture of the dove descending on Jesus, together with heavenly words of love and affection, reminds us too of the Song of Songs, the greatest love song ever written. Jesus is the word of God. He is God’s love song to the world.

How beautiful you are, my darling. Your eyes are doves. My dove, my perfect one, is unique. When Jesus looks at you, he sees your beauty, he sees the best in you. You might focus on your own flaws and imperfections. Jesus sees that too but not with the look of disdain or contempt. Jesus understands you are a work in progress and he sees you as you will be one day, flawless, perfect, unique.  

Then there is the image of doves crying, moaning and mourning. Jesus is the man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus and he wept over Jerusalem. Jesus weeps for the world today too. He understands your pain, your loss, your loneliness.

The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  

Jonah, whose name means dove, points to Jesus. Both Jonah and Jesus slept in a boat during a storm. Jonah was three days in the belly of a fish, while Jesus was three days in the tomb. And both were prophets sent with a message of repentance to a world in need of God’s mercy.

Jonah is not like Jesus in every way though. Jesus was quicker to obey God.

Not that Jesus’ obedience came easy. Jesus struggled in prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, sweating great drops of blood as he reconciled himself to God’s will in going to the cross. Not my will, Father, but your will be done.

There is one other connection with the dove that we haven’t mentioned yet. Sometime after his baptism, in Matthew 10, Jesus says to his disciples…

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

A dove is innocent in the sense that it is harmless. A dove is not a violent bird. It is not a bird which preys on other animals in order to survive. Therefore, in the context of Matthew 10, the followers of Jesus are to be like doves and do no harm, just as Jesus did no harm.

But in the context of Luke 3, where Jesus is representing the human race and the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove, the message is twofold…

Firstly, God means us no harm. God intends good for us. The Lord, the holy one, comes gently and without violence, like a dove.

Secondly, Jesus is innocent, not guilty of sin. Which means that all those who are in Christ, are also innocent.   

Conclusion:

Love, beauty, peace, a new creation, a fresh start, sacrifice, the calm after the storm, the pain of mourning, a second chance, mercy and innocence. These are what the Bible associates with doves and these are fulfilled in Christ.

May the Spirit of Jesus fill you and guide you. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • Do you like birds? If so, what is it you like about them? If not, what don’t you like? What is your favourite bird and why? What is your least favourite bird and why?
  • Before hearing this sermon, what did you associate with doves?
  • Discuss / reflect on each of the various images associated with doves in the Old Testament. For example, peace after the storm, sacrifice, love, beauty, Jonah, new creation, etc. Which of these images / ideas speaks most strongly to you? 
  • Thinking of Jesus’ baptism in Luke 3:21-22, what light does the dove imagery shed on Jesus’ purpose/mission?
  • Why did Jesus get baptised? What is the significance of Jesus’ baptism for those who are in Christ?
Tawa Baptist

God’s Commitment

Scripture: Genesis 8:20-22 and Matthew 13:24-30

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Noah’s worship
  • God’s commitment
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Let me tell you a story. Once there was an artist, a painter. He had an eye for light, the way it falls differently depending on the time of year and the time of day. Although he worked hard trying to capture the nuance of the light on his subject, he never felt like he quite did justice to the picture in his mind’s eye. But at the same time he wasn’t able to give it up. The pursuit of beauty made him even more determined.

One day the artist was asked to paint a mural on a wall for the town. He took this project seriously. After months of thinking and sketching he started painting. The scale of the mural was large but he had it finished in a week. He wouldn’t admit to it being perfect but it was certainly very good – it suited the space. Many passers-by stopped to admire the mural’s grace and message.     

Sadly, one night, some vandals came and defaced the mural. The artist was deeply hurt by this. Not only had the vandals undone the time and effort he had put into the painting, they had shown contempt for him and contempt for the light. The only part of the mural not damaged was a corner where his name was. It was like the culprits wanted to mar his reputation.  

The artist could not stand to look at the now grotesque image. He set to work removing the graffiti but the spray paint they had used was stubborn; it wouldn’t wash off without damaging the art work underneath. There was no way to clean the mess without destroying the mural. Only the corner with his name on it was able to be saved.

Once the wall had been washed, the artist went about repainting the mural. In doing this he knew he was making himself vulnerable to getting hurt all over again. The vandals would likely come back to ruin the new art work too. But the artist refused to be silenced. He was determined that light and beauty would prevail in the end.    

Today we continue our series on Noah and the great flood. In some ways God is like the painter in the story and his creation is like the mural. Although the world God created was good, some vandals defaced it and God had little choice but to start again with Noah, the only one not tagged by evil.

Last week we heard how God remembered Noah, while Noah waited patiently for the Lord as the flood waters receded. This morning Noah and the animals are finally released from the ark. From Genesis 8, verses 20-22, we read…

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offeringson it. 21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aromaand said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the groundbecause of humans, even thoughevery inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.And never again will I destroyall living creatures, as I have done. 22 “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

In this passage we see Noah’s worship of the Lord and God’s commitment to repaint the mural of his creation.

Noah’s worship:

Can anyone tell me what happened on Tuesday the 28th April this year? [Wait]

That’s right, New Zealand moved from level 4 lockdown to level 3, under COVID restrictions. This meant that around 400,000 people returned to work and some restaurants opened for takeaways. I remember watching the evening news and seeing really long queues of cars snaking down the road as people waited in the drive-thru for their first taste of McDonalds in over a month.

After over a year in the ark God tells Noah he can leave; his lockdown is over. And the first thing we read that Noah does was worship God. Noah built an altar to the Lord and sacrificed some of the clean animals and birds on it. 

We know from the beginning of Genesis 7 that God instructed Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of every unclean animal. So in sacrificing some of the clean animals Noah wasn’t wiping out the species, he had spares.

We can’t be sure what constituted a clean animal or bird in Noah’s day. The Law of Moses, which defines what is clean and unclean, was not introduced until centuries after Noah so we don’t know what animals Noah sacrificed. But that is beside the point. The main thing here is that Noah’s first thought was not a Maccas run or going back to the office or anything mundane like that. His first thought was worshipping God. Noah puts God first.

Verse 21 of Genesis 8 indicates that God was pleased with Noah’s sacrifice. While Genesis 8 doesn’t explain why God was pleased, we know from elsewhere in Scripture the sorts of things God is looking for in worship.

For our worship to be pleasing to God it needs to be true. We can’t fake it with God. True worship comes from the inside out. In other words, it has its roots in our heart and its fruit in our obedient actions.

In Isaiah 29, verse 13, God criticizes the people of Isaiah’s day saying: These people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.

Jesus had a similar complaint about many of the religious leaders of his day. Jesus described them as ‘white washed tombs’ – looking good on the outside but full of decay and corruption on the inside.

In John 4, verse 24, while speaking to the Samaritan woman by the well, Jesus made it clear what kind of worship God requires saying: God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

Obeying God in faith is the litmus test of true, heartfelt worship. Like the prophet Micah famously said: Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstbornfor my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humblywith your God.         

And that is probably why God was pleased with Noah’s sacrifice of worship, because Noah obeyed God. Not just for show, when people were looking, but from the heart when it was him alone with God.

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross has done away with the need for animal sacrifice. We don’t need to approach God by killing a lamb or a dove. We are able to approach God through faith in Jesus.

This is not to say that our worship is without sacrifice. Our sacrificial worship of God may come in a variety of forms these days, including the money we give to the poor and to the church, as well as the time we volunteer in service to God and his people.

If you are in business, then part of your worship may cost you trade if you choose not to do business on a Sunday. I am mindful too of the way this church (Tawa Baptist) has often offered its best and brightest people to serve in church and mission work both here in NZ and overseas. The people are a church’s life blood. It is a costly sacrifice training up interns and then sending them off to be a blessing for someone else.  

Noah’s worship was pleasing to God because it was true. Noah’s worship came from the inside out. It had its roots in Noah’s heart and its fruit in Noah’s obedient actions. Noah put God first, before his stomach and before his career.

God’s commitment:

It appears that Noah’s worship touched God’s heart. In verse 21, of Genesis 8, we read, The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma [of Noah’s sacrifice] 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 destroyall living creatures, as I have done…”

The reference to cursing the ground connects with Genesis 3, after the fall of humankind, when God cursed the ground making it harder for people to grow food. God will not curse the ground again because of humans.

But the more interesting thing here is God’s commitment to the human race. In Genesis 6:5, before the flood, we read how …every inclination of the human heart was only evil all the time. Now, after the flood in Genesis 8:21, we read that …every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. This shows us the flood has not changed the human heart. Noah’s heart may be better than most but God can see that, in time, his creation will degenerate again.

God is a bit like the artist who painted the mural on the wall. Even though the human heart has not changed, even though God knows the vandals will return to deface his image, the Lord resolves to persevere with his creation. He is determined that the beauty of his grace will prevail in the end. The implication here is that God is committing himself to suffering with his creation. God is leaving himself open to more grief so that we may be saved. 

Let me tell you another story. Once there was a writer. She wrote all sorts of things, from poems to short stories, to novels and even the occasional play. She was always looking for the right words to express the truth of something but often felt like her words didn’t quite do justice to the truth. Still, she couldn’t help writing. The pursuit of truth made her even more determined. 

One day she wrote a play. Actually it brewed in her mind for years before pouring out on her keyboard over the course of a week. She wouldn’t admit to it being perfect but it was certainly very good – a masterpiece. Handing her play over to the cast of actors felt like handing a child over to strangers. It was an act of trust. She hoped they would look after her baby.

Some months passed while the actors rehearsed the script and the prop builders constructed the set. Finally, the opening night came. The play started well but before long it became apparent the actors didn’t know their lines. In fact, the cast had made some pretty big changes to the script and it wasn’t recognizable as her story anymore.

The writer sat in the audience heart broken. Most of the cast of the play had completely misunderstood their parts. They had taken her magnum opus and turned it into a farce. Only one actor nailed it. The play-write felt betrayed. She wanted to stand up and stop the whole show. But instead she sat through it, even though it was torture, both for her and the rest of the audience.        

In some ways, God is like the writer of the play and humanity is like the cast who have forgotten their lines, misunderstood their parts and changed the script.  

Returning to Genesis 8. When God resolved not to destroy humanity he was essentially making a commitment to persevere with our imperfection, at least for a period of time (although not forever). Ultimately God’s plan is to redeem his creation – to make it new and perfect again.

The kingdom of heaven is a place where all the actors understand their parts and know their lines by heart. It is a place where God’s will is done; where his script is followed and the story of our lives are given coherence and meaning.

In Ezekiel 36:26, God says through the prophet: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

In other words, God intends to give humanity a heart transplant; to remove our hard unfeeling heart (our dead heart) and give us a heart which is alive and beats for him. A heart which feels and is grieved by evil, as God’s heart is.

In Matthew 13 Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the weeds. An enemy sows weeds among the wheat but the farmer does not uproot the weeds in case this disturbs the wheat. He allows the weeds to grow alongside the wheat until the harvest. Then at the harvest the workers separate the weeds from the wheat. The weeds are destroyed and the wheat is saved.

The parable of the wheat and the weeds is an allegory about the final judgement – the harvest represents judgement day. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of God’s kingdom, while the weeds are the people of the evil one.

There is a point of connection between this parable and God’s attitude after the flood. Namely that God is committed to redeeming what is good in his creation, even though that involves persevering with the weeds of evil for a certain period of time.

Conclusion:

The world we live in is not perfect but the good news is: this world is not all there is. God has chosen to suffer with his creation in order to redeem it. In the end, the light of God’s truth and the beauty of God’s grace will prevail.

In the meantime, God makes this commitment: 22 “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

What connections do you see between the story of the artist who painted the mural and the story God who created the earth?

Why do you think God was pleased with Noah’s sacrifice? What makes our worship pleasing to God?

What are the implications of God’s commitment to persevere with human beings, even though the human heart is bent toward evil?     

What connections do you see between the story of the writer who penned the play and the story of God who created history?

What connections do you see between God’s attitude after the flood (in Genesis 8:21) and the parable of the wheat & weeds (in Matthew 13)?

Although this world/life is not perfect, the hope of God’s kingdom gives us something to look forward to. What can we look forward to in the fullness of God’s kingdom?

Tawa Baptist

God Remembers

Scripture: Genesis 8:1-19

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • God remembers
  • Noah waits
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Can anyone tell me, what is the word we use to describe the point at which a seesaw balances? I’ll give you a couple of seconds. [Wait]

That’s right, the point at which a seesaw balances, is called a fulcrum  

We find fulcrums everywhere. The hinge in a door is a fulcrum. Likewise, your hip, knee and shoulder joints act as fulcrums for your bones. A fulcrum allows movement and change.

The word ‘fulcrum’ can also be used metaphorically to refer to a person or thing that plays an essential (or pivotal) role in an activity or situation. For example, a teacher may be described as a fulcrum for a student’s learning or a common love of fishing might be the fulcrum for a friendship. This microphone is a fulcrum for my voice.  

Today we continue our series on the story of Noah and the great flood.

Last Sunday we heard how God instructed Noah to enter the ark, with the animals, and then the flood came.  This morning’s passage (Genesis 8) is a fulcrum passage – the rain stops and the flood waters recede. Everything pivots on God remembering Noah.

From Genesis chapter 8, verses 1-19, we read…

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. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavenshad been closed, and the rainhad stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty daysthe water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh monththe ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 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.

6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven,and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 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. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 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. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

13 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. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second monththe earth was completely dry.

15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 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.”

18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 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.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us

There are two things I want to highlight from this morning’s Bible reading: God’s remembering and Noah’s waiting. First let’s consider God’s remembering. God’s remembering is the fulcrum which changes things for the better.

God remembers:

There’s a programme on TV 1 called The Repair Shop. In this programme people bring along a family heirloom or some other beloved belonging that has seen better days and leave it with a group of craftspeople who restore the old item to something close to its former glory.

It might be an antique bicycle or a teddy bear or a doll or a clock and the workers at the repair shop re-member it – they literally put it back together the way it used to be. The show normally ends with the grateful owner looking at their treasured object, with tears in their eyes, amazed at the wonderful work that has been done in restoring it.

When reading the Bible, we need to keep in mind that the words we read (in English) are a translation and something of the meaning is often lost in the process of translation. The word remember is a classic example.

We tend to equate remembering with recalling a thought we had previously forgotten. For us, remembering is generally a mental exercise and nothing more. But for the ancient Hebrew people (who wrote the Old Testament) remembering was far more than recalling something in your head. Remembering involved actually doing something practical. Remembering may start in your mind but it’s supposed to find expression in your hands and feet.

In the Old Testament remembering is more akin to repairing, restoring, regathering, repenting and renewing. Putting things back together again, the way they are supposed to be – sort of like they do in The Repair Shop.

To use another example, if you cut your finger off, then you literally re-member your finger by having a surgeon sew it back on your hand.

When God gave Moses the 10 commandments, the Lord framed the fourth commandment by saying: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy…”

Remembering here doesn’t just mean recalling something in your head. Remembering is an act of obedience; ceasing work to allow your body, soul and relationships to be restored or repaired. The Sabbath is a kind of Repair Shop for the human soul. On the Sabbath, we re-member what’s important. We put our perspective and priorities and relationships back together in the right place.

The Old Testament concept of remembering isn’t totally foreign to us though. To some extent we still remember in the way the ancients used to.

If someone in your family has a birthday, you remember them by buying them a present or baking them a cake.

Or if one of your friends ends up in hospital, you remember them by visiting and cheering them up.

Or you might remember the poor by sponsoring a child through World Vision or donating to a food bank.

We remember the environment by recycling and reducing our carbon footprint.

And you remember your marriage vows by staying faithful to your partner in marriage.

The establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975 was one way the NZ government sought to practically remember the Treaty; by providing a means for Maori to find resolution for Treaty grievances.

During lockdown we remembered our neighbours by observing physical distancing and phoning people to check up on them.        

Later in the service today we will share communion together. When Jesus instituted communion he said, ‘Do this to remember me’. By remember me he didn’t just mean, ‘think about me in your head’. He meant re-member my body, the church. As in, come back together (regather) as a community of faith. The fact that we actually do something physical when we share communion (like eating and drinking) shows that Biblical remembering is more than just a mental exercise.  

Communion is the sign of the new covenant with God, established by Jesus. Therefore, to remember Jesus is to keep the new covenant. It is to maintain our obedience of faith in Jesus. And where we have messed up, remembering means repenting and putting things right. To remember Jesus is to ensure he remains in his proper place as Lord of our lives.

Genesis 8, verse 1, is the fulcrum verse in the account of Noah and the flood.

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.

This is the pivotal verse. It is God’s remembering that changes the situation. From this point onwards the destruction of God’s judgement swings the other way toward renewal and a fresh start for creation.

It’s not that God had forgotten about Noah and the animals in the ark. God was mindful of them the whole time. As Derek Kidner observes, God’s remembering combines the ideas of faithful love and timely intervention. [1]

God’s remembering of Noah is expressed in a real and physical way by his stopping the rain and sending a wind to dry up the waters. Those of you who are familiar with the creation account in Genesis 1 will recognise the parallels. Verse 2 of Genesis 1 tells us that in the beginning, the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit (or wind) of God was hovering over the waters. The flood waters represent chaos. God’s remembering of his creation restores order to the chaos. Noah is the new Adam. 

There are other parallels with Genesis 1 as well, but I’ll let you figure those out for yourself. 

One of the things we notice about God’s remembering here is that it is a process. God’s remembering doesn’t necessarily produce instantaneous results. It’s not like God clicked his fingers and, voila, the water instantly disappeared. No. It took months for the water to steadily recede, for the land to dry out and the vegetation to regrow. In the meantime, Noah had to wait.

Noah waits:

What we notice about Noah’s waiting is that it is purposeful and not passive. Noah isn’t just sitting there in the ark, with the animals, twiddling his thumbs. He’s not just waiting for the water to go down. Noah is waiting for God to give him the green light to leave. Noah’s waiting is purposeful, not passive.

You may have heard of the marshmallow experiments, conducted by Stanford University in the 1970’s. In these experiments a child was put in a room with a marshmallow in front of them and told that if they waited until the grown up came back they could have a second marshmallow. So, it was either one now or two later.

Subsequent marshmallow studies showed that trust was one of the main reasons children would wait for a second marshmallow. If the child was led to mistrust the adult doing the experiment, they would grab the marshmallow sooner. But if they were led to trust the adult they were more likely to wait. 

Noah may have been like one of those kids who could wait long enough for the extra marshmallow. Noah was able to wait because he trusted God. He knew God was reliable and would deliver.    

Noah’s waiting was purposeful, not passive. It was resourceful, not resentful. He demonstrated patience and meekness in waiting. His heart is to trust and obey God.

I’ve spoken about meekness before. Meekness is not weakness. Meekness is power under control. In fact, meekness requires great strength of character as it combines gentleness with self-control. And we know what Jesus said about the meek: they shall inherit the earth. In other words, they get the marshmallow in the end. Noah certainly inherited the earth.

Although Noah had many opportunities to leave the ark, he waited until God said it was okay to leave.

When the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, in the Lake Van region of Eastern Turkey, Noah had been on board for about 150 days, which is around 5 months. That’s a long time to wait in cramped and smelly conditions. As the water receded and land became visible, it would have been tempting for Noah to get out for some fresh air and to stretch his legs but he doesn’t. Instead Noah waits for God, for another 150 days.

Like I keep saying, Noah’s waiting was not passive. Noah’s waiting was purposeful and active. Noah looked forward in hope and anticipation to the time when God would set the captives free from the darkness of the ark.

We see Noah’s hopeful anticipation in what he does while he waits. Noah does three things: he opens a window, he sends out birds to test the waters and he takes the roof off.

Studies have shown how prisoners, with a window in their cell, tend to maintain better mental health than prisoners who have no window.    

Verse 6 of Genesis 8 tells how Noah opens the window he had made in the ark. Sometimes we might feel like God has forgotten us. Sometimes the winter of our discontent seems to drag on and on. Sometimes our prayers seem to go unanswered and our faithfulness unrewarded. We may feel like God is absent and we are in the dark. When it feels like that, open a window. Let some light in so you can see. Let some air flow through so you can breathe. Slow down. Let yourself look at the mountain tops. Dream a little. Recover a sense of the bigger picture. Let your perspective return.    

Verses 7-11 describe how Noah sends out first a raven and then a dove to do some recon-nascence for him. The raven doesn’t bring him any good news, so he sends out a dove. In verse 9 we read: But the dove could find no place to set its feet 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.

That last sentence there shows us something of Noah’s gentleness with the dove; reaching out his hand to bring the dove back into the ark. It provides a beautiful picture of a man who cares about God’s creatures in a personal way. Noah is a greeny – perhaps a bit like the character Cooch, in Murray Ball’s cartoon Footrot Flats.

Seven days later Noah sends the dove out a second time. This time it returns with an olive leaf in its beak. Olive trees are very hardy – they are difficult to kill. They are the kind of tree that survives a flood. The fresh foliage is a sign that the vegetation is recovering, so the animals will have something to eat.

A week later when Noah sent the dove out it did not return, which showed that God’s renewal of the land was almost complete. But still Noah waits for God’s word.

The dove over the flood waters reminds us of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus over the waters of the Jordan river, after Jesus’ baptism. [2] Just as Noah’s dove proves itself sensitive and discerning, a guide to those waiting for God’s new creation, so too the Holy Spirit is like a dove to us; sensitive and discerning, gently guiding us as we wait for the new creation Jesus brings.

The third thing Noah does, as he waits in hopeful expectation of God’s renewal, is he removes the covering of the ark. He takes the roof off in other words. This is a quiet act of courageous faith on Noah’s part. To remove the covering is to take a risk and make oneself vulnerable. What if the rain started again? Removing the roof is a statement that Noah believes the storm will not return.

Taking off the roof also allows Noah to get a broader view of the situation than his little window afforded him. Even though Noah could see the ground was dry, he still does not disembark. Noah continues to wait for the word of the Lord and finally God says to Noah, ‘Come out of the ark and let the animals out too…’ and Noah obeyed God.

Conclusion:

You know, in some ways, our experience of lockdown was similar to Noah’s experience as he waited in the ark. Like Noah, our waiting was purposeful, not passive. We weren’t as restricted as Noah was of course, but we did have our wings clipped. Our recent experience gives us some understanding for Noah’s situation and his waiting.

While I don’t want to talk too soon, it seems that God has remembered us here in New Zealand. Relative to the rest of the world we have much to be thankful for.

Globally though, the world is still in a time of waiting for the ‘flood’ of new COVID cases to recede. We pray for the fulcrum of God’s mercy.     

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

What does the Bible mean by remembering? How is this different from the way we (today) tend to think of remembering?

What happened as a result of God remembering Noah and the animals in the ark?   

What parallels do we notice between the account of creation in Genesis 1 and the renewal of creation in Genesis 8?

How do you feel about waiting? Is it something you find easy or hard? Why is that do you think?

What helped Noah in his waiting? (What did he do?) What might help us in our waiting? For example; when we feel trapped in a dark place, how might we open a window to the let the light and air in?

In what ways does Noah’s dove point to the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism?

Is there someone or something you need to remember, in the Biblical sense of that word? What might this mean you need to do?

[1] Refer Derek Kidner’s commentary on Genesis, page 92. 

[2] Refer to Luke 3:22 for an account of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism.

Tawa Baptist

Be Prepared

Scripture: Genesis 7 and Luke 17:26-27

Structure:

  • Introduction – be prepared
  • Fact or fiction
  • Global or regional
  • Random or intentional
  • Conclusion – be prepared for Jesus’ return

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

When I was about 9 or 10 years old I was a cub scout. One of the things they taught us at cubs was to be prepared. Be prepared for anything. And to help us be prepared they sometimes did spot checks when we turned up for our weekly den meeting.

There were three things a cub scout needed to have on them to be prepared and these included a handkerchief, a pencil and three 2 cent pieces. The value of a handkerchief and a pencil need no explanation. They are helpful in all sorts of situations. But some of you may be wondering why we always needed to carry three 2 cent pieces. Well, that was the cost of a phone call from a public phone booth in those days. If you couldn’t fix the problem with a pencil and a handkerchief, then you could at least phone a friend for help.

I don’t know what Cubs and Brownies are supposed to carry with them these days. At a guess I imagine a handkerchief, a smart phone and unlimited data.  

Today we continue our series on Noah. A couple of weeks ago we heard how God told Noah to build an ark because the Lord was sending a great flood on the earth. And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

This morning we hear what happens when the flood comes. At the beginning of Genesis chapter 7 God tells Noah to be prepared because the flood will start in seven days’ time. During that seven days, pairs of animals and birds come to Noah and board the ark. We pick up the story from verse 11 of Genesis 7…

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.

17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all humankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 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.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

The core message of today’s sermon is, be prepared. Alongside this core message to be prepared, Genesis 7 also raises a number of questions for us modern readers. For example, is the flood account in Genesis fact or fiction? What was the extent of the flood? What creatures were on the ark? How did all the animals fit? And how did Noah keep the lions from eating the zebras?

Some of our questions find an answer in the Biblical text but not all of them. The Bible was written thousands of years ago in a different culture from ours, by people who had a different way of thinking to us and a different knowledge base.

The writer of Genesis was primarily interested in telling us why the flood happened and what the flood reveals about God. The sorts of scientific and technical questions we might raise today were probably not even on the author’s radar. So we need to be careful not to try and make the text say things that it was never designed to say.

We can, however, use our reason and look at other evidence based sources to address some of the concerns of modern readers. I do this in the interests of helping you to be prepared. Who knows, one day you may find yourself in a conversation with someone who wants to know whether there were any dinosaurs on the ark.  

Fact or fiction:

One question people sometimes ask is whether the flood story is fact or fiction. Is it describing a real historical event or is it a fairy tale?

If you are sitting in a movie theatre and you see the words on the screen: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” you know you are about to watch a Star Wars movie. Star Wars is not real; it is science fiction. You are not there to learn information about the past. You are there to be entertained.  

And if you hear someone begin a story with: “Once upon a time…” you know you are about to hear a fairy tale. Although the story itself is not true you know it probably contains some moral lesson, some eternal truth.  

But when someone begins by saying: “On the 3rd February 1868 a violent storm swept across much of the country…”  you know this is not a made up story; this is non-fiction, and you are about to hear the historical account of a disaster. In actual fact there was a great storm in 1868 which swept across New Zealand causing flash floods and taking the lives of more than 40 people. [1]

Likewise, when the news reader on TV says: “Breaking news… we cross now live to our reporter…” you know what you are hearing and seeing is real. This is not entertainment, nor are you likely to learn some great pearl of wisdom. You are simply being informed of current events; history in the making.

Our reading this morning, from Genesis 7, begins with the words: “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.”

This style of writing, with a very precise date and a description of facts, tells us that whoever wrote Genesis wants us to know the great flood is something that actually happened. It is not a made up story. What you are about to hear describes a historical event. [2]

The gospel of Luke describes the birth of Jesus in a similar way. Although Luke doesn’t give a precise year or date, he does name the emperor of Rome and the governor of Syria when Jesus was born, so we know it happened in history.

Now we don’t know exactly what year B.C. the great flood happened. Our records aren’t that good. But we do know, from the way the flood account is written, the human author wants us to think of it as fact, not fiction. He wants us to take our relationship with God and the world seriously. We need to learn from the great flood. Human actions have real consequences.      

Of course, the way the human authors of the Bible did history is not exactly the same as the way modern historians operate. They don’t follow the same rules. Events recorded in the Bible have a theological meaning. The Bible isn’t merely trying to inform the reader of certain facts. The Bible is using historical events to reveal some truths about God and humankind. What’s more, Biblical accounts of historical events are often communicated in an artistic way, using poetic license. These days, historians are more scientific, more precisely measured, in their approach.     

Returning to the question of whether the flood in Genesis is fact or fiction; when we look outside the Bible we find that many ancient cultures have a flood story as part of their collective memory.[3] The various versions of the flood story are different but the fact they are commonly found around the world may indicate there was a significant natural disaster in the early stages of human history. This event was then passed on, in story form, from one generation to the next, as a way of remembering and making sense of what happened. 

Global or regional:

If we say the flood happened in history then the next thing people today often ask is: what was the extent of the flood? Was it global or was it regional; perhaps the known world at that time? Most experts I’ve read are reluctant to commit to an answer on the extent of the flood, so we shouldn’t be too dogmatic on the position we take.

The Biblical text says, in verse 19, ‘The waters rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.’ 

Then in verse 23 we read, ‘Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out…’

When we hear that we think, the flood must have been global then. But there are problems with that option.

The first problem is that the human author of Genesis did not necessarily think of the earth in the same way we do. John Walton says that people in the ancient Mesopotamian world thought of the earth as a single continent surrounded by mountains. [4] And beyond the mountains was the celestial sea, whatever that is. That means the human author of Genesis would not have known about Australia or New Zealand or America or China or Russia or any of those sorts of places.

Given that the human author of Genesis probably had a much smaller understanding of the earth than we do, it could be the flood he had in mind covered the known world at that time, which is still a relatively large area.       

As we learned when we did the series on the creation account in Genesis 1, God does not deem it necessary to correct our understanding of science. He accepts our limited perception and accommodates our understanding.

So far geologists have found no physical evidence for a global flood that dissipated as quickly as the flood described in Genesis. Although they have found physical evidence for significant flood events in the Middle East. That’s not to say a global flood could not have happened. It’s just that we haven’t yet been able to find physical evidence for it. Maybe in 20 years’ time we will find data that supports a global flood? 

A scientist by the name of Glenn Morton found geological data which shows that five and half million years ago the Mediterranean Sea was not there. It was in fact dry land. The water was naturally dammed up at Gibraltar. This natural dam feature suddenly collapsed causing a break more than 3,000 feet deep and 15 miles wide, filling the Mediterranean basin in less than 9 months. [5]

The water that flowed into the Mediterranean basin covered an area of 964,000 square miles. That’s over nine times the size of New Zealand. That volume of water, rising quickly, would have easily precipitated torrential rain for at least 40 days, if not longer.

We don’t really know when Noah lived. The flooding of the Mediterranean basin was probably before Noah’s time. In any case, this scientific data demonstrates that a flood of massive proportions did happen in the ancient world. But that wasn’t the only flood. In his commentary on Genesis, John Walton, who provides very solid scholarship, says this: 

In the mid-1990’s geologists and oceanographers began investigating a huge catastrophic flood in the region of the Black Sea. Their findings indicate that in about 5500 B.C. there was a sudden rise in water level in the Mediterranean, which brought a thunderous waterfall through the Bosporous and into the Black Sea. Over the course of a year it flooded out 60,000 square miles of land… [6]

(To put that in context the South Island of New Zealand is 58,000 square miles.)

Prior to this time fossil evidence shows the Black Sea was a fresh water sea. The salt water flooding in from the Mediterranean turned the Black Sea salty.

Could this be the flood that was described in Genesis 7? Maybe, but we can’t be sure. Humility requires us to admit the limits of our knowledge.

A couple of weeks ago we heard about the dimensions of the ark. Although the ark was an enormous vessel, even by today’s standards, it probably wasn’t big enough to accommodate pairs of every animal and bird on the planet, plus all the food and water they would need for a whole year.

The question of which animals were on the ark logically depends on the extent of the flood. If the flood wasn’t global then only those animals in the vicinity of the flood waters needed to board the ark. In other words, if the flood covered the known world at the time then kangaroos living in Australia and Moa living in NZ didn’t need to be on the ark.

And as for the question of whether dinosaurs were involved the answer is no. Scientists tell us that dinosaurs became extinct millions of years before human beings came along. Contrary to what you learned by watching the Flintstones, dinosaurs and humans never co-existed.

The good news is you don’t have to commit to a particular point of view on these sorts of issues. Your salvation depends on what you believe about Jesus, not on whether you think the flood was global or regional. It’s not worth arguing about.    

Random or intentional:

I said earlier the human author of Genesis was really more interested in answering the question of why the great flood happened. And the answer he gives, repeatedly, is that it was God’s judgement on humanity’s corrupt and violent ways. It wasn’t so much that God wanted to destroy his creation. I believe God works with the choices we make, but sometimes our choices leave God with limited options.

So the great flood in Genesis was intentional. It was not random. It was controlled by God to achieve his purpose; cleansing the earth of evil and bringing renewal to his creation. This then begs the question of whether other natural disasters are also examples of God executing his judgement on people.

Well, the short answer is ‘no’.

While God did intentionally use the flood waters to cleanse the earth in Genesis 7, it does not automatically follow that he always works through natural disasters. Most natural disasters, whether it is a flood or an earthquake or a volcanic eruption or a storm, or whatever, are not intentional acts of judgement. The great flood in Genesis seems to be an exception to the rule.

In the normal course of events, earthquakes happen because that’s the way God has made the earth – he has designed it to move. The earth, with its tectonic plates, is one of God’s creatures; it is a living thing. When the earth moves it is simply being itself – it is doing what God created it to do. Without earthquakes we wouldn’t have dry land and mountains. From our perspective earthquakes can be frightening but they are not personally targeted at people or cities. Generally speaking, earthquakes are random. The most we can do is be prepared.

In December last year Whakaari / White Island erupted. There were 47 people on the island at the time. 21 people were killed and the other 26 suffered injuries. I don’t believe that was an intentional act of God against those people. I think it was a random event and the people on the island were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time – they were unlucky. White Island erupted because it is an active volcano and that’s what volcanoes do from time to time.  If you are going to step onto an active volcano, then you have to be prepared to take the risk. We can’t blame God for that one.  

You know many Christians are uncomfortable with the idea of randomness or luck. In fact, ‘luck’ is often a taboo word in churches. Some people have a tendency to think that God is tightly controlling every little detail of their lives. And it is understandable that we might think this way because the message of the Bible is that God is sovereign. God does have a plan and purpose for his creation which he is working out. Life is not totally random.

Furthermore, God does sometimes get involved in the details. We call that providence. In verse 16 of Genesis 7 we read that God got involved in the details by shutting Noah in the ark. Apparently Noah didn’t prepare a way to shut the door from the inside, so God did it for him.

But just because God gets involved in the details sometimes doesn’t mean he is micro-managing everything all the time. If we think God is tightly controlling every little detail of our lives, then we set our faith up for a fall. If something goes wrong, then we either blame God or we blame the government or we blame ourselves; when actually it was no one’s fault, it was just bad luck. 

It is more helpful to think: that although God is ultimately in control, he allows his creatures (both human and non-human) a certain amount of freedom to be themselves. And when God does that; when he lets the earth quake, when he allows volcanoes to erupt, when he gives human beings freewill, there is (unfortunately) some collateral damage. [7]

With freedom comes mess. This world is not always safe. This life is not always fair. But ultimately, God is able to make things right.  

This is not to absolve human beings of all responsibility. Our actions do have an effect on the environment. We are capable of making already naturally occurring events worse. For example, if we listen to the scientific community, then global warming is making weather patterns more extreme. Production of plastic is polluting the oceans and intensive farming methods are poisoning waterways.

So there are some things we can do to mitigate the risk of natural disasters. For example, we can design buildings that stand up in an earthquake, we can stop producing so much plastic and we can reduce our carbon foot print. We can prepare for a better outcome, in other words.

Conclusion:

Returning to Genesis 7. In verse 23, we read that: 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.

This is incredibly sad not to mention terrifying. No one wants to think God is capable of that kind of mass destruction, but he is.

Part of Jesus’ message is that judgement is coming on the earth for the people of this age. In Luke 17 Jesus says this: 26 “Just as it was in the days of Noah,so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

In the context of Luke 17, Jesus is talking about his second coming in glory. He is saying to his disciples, life will be carrying on as normal and then the end will come unexpectedly; so be prepared, be ready like Noah was, because I could return at any moment.

Jesus’ return is not fiction; it is future fact. He will return one day.

Jesus’ return is not regional; it will be global, to the ends of the earth.

And Jesus’ return is both intentional and random. It is intentional in the sense that God has planned for it to happen. But, from our point of view, it is random in the sense that it could happen at any time.  

In Genesis 7 it was only Noah and his family who were saved but the good news is: through faith in Jesus anyone can be saved from the next judgement. 

The ark Jesus is building has plenty of room for everyone.

We prepare for Jesus’ return by getting our lives right with God. By cultivating a living relationship of faith in Jesus, through prayer and action. By listening to Jesus’ teaching and obeying his call on our lives.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

What sorts of question does the Genesis account of the flood raise for you? Can you find an answer for your questions in the Bible or do you need to look elsewhere?

How does the text of Genesis 7 indicate the flood account is fact and not fiction? What evidence do we find outside the Bible for a great flood in ancient times?

What claims does Genesis make about the extent of the flood? How might we best understand these claims, in light of reason and the scientific evidence available to us?

Why did the great flood (of Noah’s time) happen? Why do natural disasters happen today?

Do you believe God allows some degree of randomness or luck in this world? Why or why not? What is the risk of believing God tightly manages every little detail of life?

How do you feel reading Genesis 7:23?

How did Jesus interpret Noah’s flood, in Luke 17? What can we do to be prepared for Jesus’ second coming?     

[1] https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/new-zealand-disasters/timeline

[2] Refer Bruce Waltke, Genesis, page 139.

[3] Flood stories are found in most ancient cultures, except Africa where they are rare. 

[4] John Walton, NIVAC Genesis, page 327.

[5] Ibid, pages 329-330.

[6] Ibid, page 330.

[7] Refer Terence Fretheim’s book, ‘Creation Untamed’, page 73.

Tawa Baptist

God’s plan to preserve

Scripture: Genesis 6:9-22

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • God’s plan to preserve
  • Noah’s obedience of faith
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Abraham Lincoln once said: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” 

I suppose the point is, work smarter, not harder. Plan ahead to give yourself the best chance of success.

Of course, those four hours of sharpening require quite a bit of patience. The temptation is to just crack on with the job using a blunt axe. But in those four hours, the wood cutter is also thinking: does this tree really need to come down? And if it does, what is the best way to bring it down safely? And once it is down, how will I use it?   

Today we continue our series on Noah and the great flood. Last week we heard about the grief God experiences as a consequence of his wayward creation. When God looked at the rudder of the human heart and saw it was set toward evil all the time his heart was filled with pain.

This morning we meet Noah and we learn what God plans to do about the mess the world is in. This is our third sermon into this series and we still haven’t got to the flood yet. In some ways it seems like God is spending a lot of time sharpening the axe. This shows the Lord (Yahweh) was not acting rashly or in the heat of the moment. He was acting carefully, with patience and control.

From Genesis 6, verses 9 to 22 we read…

9 This is the accountof Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem,Ham and Japheth.

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corruptthe earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood;make rooms in it and coat it with pitchinside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening 18 incheshigh all around.Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Twoof every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kindof creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.       

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

There are two main ideas I want to highlight in this passage: God’s plan to preserve a remnant and Noah’s obedience of faith. First let’s consider God’s plan to preserve a remnant.

God’s plan to preserve:

To preserve something is to keep it safe from destruction or decay. For example, you might preserve meat by keeping it in a freezer. Or you might preserve peaches by putting them in a can. Or you might preserve bananas by slicing them up and dehydrating them into banana chips.

In Norway there is a global seed vault (in the Arctic circle) which stores hundreds of thousands of varieties of seeds. This seed vault is designed to ensure the preservation of seeds during large-scale regional or global crises.

Preserving food is one thing but people may also want to preserve their relationships. You preserve a relationship by staying in touch with that person, keeping the lines of communication open and maintaining a mutual commitment to one another’s well-being.

On the one hand, the flood story is about God’s judgment in destroying his creation because it had become corrupt and violent. But at the same time it is also about God’s very careful plan to preserve a remnant, in order to restart (or re-seed) a new creation. In fact, today’s text pays more attention to God’s plan of preservation than it does to the destruction caused by the flood. The focus is on the lengths God goes to, to save and renew his creation.

The idea of God preserving a faithful remnant is repeated throughout the Scriptures. For example, during the time of Elijah, when it seemed like the whole nation had turned its back on God, the Lord tells Elijah he has preserved 7000 people for himself who have not bowed their knee to Baal. God also preserved a faithful remnant through the Assyrian invasions of Israel and later through the Babylonian exile. [1]  

One thing we notice about God’s plan to preserve is the detail. We are told about the dimensions of the ark, the building materials, the sorts of animals that were to go into the ark, the kind of food they were to take with them and so forth. If we were to read further into Genesis chapter 7 we would come across quite a bit of repetition of this detail and we would notice some very precise dates and time frames.

All of this detail regarding God’s plan, to bring a flood and preserve a remnant, tells us a number of things about God himself:

For example, God is not in a hurry to bring judgement; he is patient and his actions are considered.

Also that God does not over react in the heat of the moment; his response is careful and measured.  

But most of all it shows God’s judgement is just and merciful.

Other ancient cultures also had a great flood as part of their collective memory. In at least one of those pagan versions of the flood story the gods (plural) brought the flood because of over population. There were too many people making too much noise and so the gods, who didn’t really care about human beings, became irritated and drowned them all. There was no justice or mercy involved in their decision. It was capricious and thoughtless. As is typical of a pagan theology, this leads one to the hopeless conclusion that life is completely random and unfair and meaningless.

The Hebrew flood story is quite different from the pagan flood stories though. The God of Israel wasn’t angry; he was grieved and in pain for his creation. The God of Israel didn’t bring the flood to control over population or to keep the noise down. God loves his creation and commanded people to be fruitful and multiply. The Lord God brought the flood to control the spread of violence. Israel’s flood story reveals a God who is different from the pagan gods of the nations. A Jewish / Christian theology leads one to the hopeful conclusion that while this life is not always fair, our God, who is just and merciful, slow to anger and full of compassion, is able to make all things new.

The other thing we notice about God’s plan to preserve a remnant is that it involves a human being. God does not act alone in preserving his creation. The Lord, who is relational, makes a covenant with Noah. In fact, God’s plan depends on Noah’s obedience of faith.

Noah’s obedience of faith:

Let me tell you a story. Once there was a wealthy business man who purchased a block of land and built a kiwi-fruit orchard on it. There was quite a bit involved in transforming the property. First he had to clear the ground of gorse and other weeds and level out the earth. Then he sowed grass seed, put in fences and shelter belts. Next came all the strainer posts and wires for training the kiwifruit vines and lastly he planted the vines themselves.

Building from scratch like that was an expensive investment. It took time and patience for the vines to grow and mature to the point they were able to bear fruit.

This business man had a good heart and wanted to run his orchard in a way that was kind to the environment, so he did it organically. Rather than chemical sprays he used companion planting and bio-diversity to control pests. And he wasn’t just a Queen Street farmer, doing all the calls and paper work from a distance. He lived in the community and walked through his orchard every day.     

Sadly, a virus got onto his property and infected one or two of the plants. Eventually almost all of the vines became infected. As the fruit matured it became evident that the plant was sick and when you tasted the fruit it was revolting. Once the virus got in there was no way to get rid of it.

The orchardist was deeply grieved over what had happened to his vines. It wasn’t so much the money he had lost. He was so rich the money didn’t matter to him. It was more the death of the dream. He had invested so much time and energy and love into it. What he had intended for good was actually doing harm. Reluctantly the owner of the orchard knew there was nothing for it – he would have to pull out all the vines and destroy them. He didn’t want to do this but what choice did he have.

As he was walking through the kiwifruit canopies thinking about this he came to a single plant. This particular vine looked different to the rest. It looked healthier somehow. Out of curiosity he tasted the fruit and it was good, like a kiwifruit is supposed to taste.

The orchardist decided then and there he would preserve a cutting from this healthy vine and use it to start a new orchard. Most men would have walked away and not bothered to risk it all again. But this man was not ready to abandon his dream.  

You can probably see the connections between my little allegory and the story of the flood. God is like the wealthy business man who builds the orchard. The orchard represents God’s creation and the vines are human beings. The diseased fruit represents the corruption and violence of human beings. While most of the vines bear bad fruit, Noah is the exception. Noah bears good fruit and so God decides to preserve Noah and his family in order to start again with a new orchard, a new creation. 

Genesis 6, verse 9, tells us that Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. This is high praise indeed. The Bible doesn’t say this about many people.

To be righteous means to live in right relationship with those around you. A righteous person is fair and just. They have a good moral compass.

The word translated as ‘blameless’ literally means to be whole or complete. So the idea here is that Noah has a whole hearted commitment to righteousness. [2] This does not mean Noah was perfect. Later on (after the flood) Noah gets drunk, but that seems to be out of character for Noah. For the most part Noah did abstain from sin.

We are told Noah walked with God, like his great grandfather Enoch. The Bible only says that of two people. Noah was a rare individual indeed. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, to walk with God means to stay close to him – near enough to have a personal conversation. Walking with God implies a relationship of intimacy and righteousness. It means following God, going where God leads, doing life God’s way.

The fact that Noah and Enoch both walked with God shows that God is not a Queen Street farmer. He is not running things remotely – he is on the earth, walking among the vines of his kiwifruit orchard.

To people of Jewish and Christian faith, Noah is a hero. But probably to the people of his own time Noah was a bit of an odd ball. A bit weird, a bit strange.[3]

Noah lived what it means to be salt & light in his world. He was distinctive, different, not bland. G.K. Chesterton makes this comment about people like Noah…

A man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world… Millions of mild black coated men call themselves sane and sensible merely because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world.

Because Noah walked with God the Lord confided in him, telling Noah about his plan to preserve a remnant. God instructs Noah to build an ark. The Hebrew word translated as ark here is used seven times in the instructions to build the ark and seven times in the report of the subsiding waters (8:1-14). [4] This precise symmetry reveals something of the poetic artistry of the Genesis account of the flood. The only other time the same Hebrew word for ark is used in Scripture is in Exodus 2. The baby Moses was placed in a miniature ark in the river Nile.   

God tells Noah what kind of wood to use in making the ark. Older translations say it was gopher wood, but we don’t really know what gopher wood is so modern translation say it was cypress wood, which is an educated guess.

The wood is to be coated in pitch, which is a water proofing agent. God also gives Noah the dimensions for the ark: 137 metres long, 23 metres wide and 14 metres high. That’s an enormous vessel by the standards of Noah’s time. Interestingly, we still use similar dimensions for large ocean going ships today, so we know the ark would have been sea worthy.

You often see pictures of Noah’s ark with a nicely rounded keel and bow but it may have been more practical for Noah to simply make the ark in the shape of a rectangular box, sort of like a coffin.  

God does not give instructions for Noah to make a sail or a rudder, just a door in the side and some ventilation near the top. The ark is literally a container at the mercy of God and the flood waters. God is not asking Noah to be a sailor but he is asking Noah to be a carpenter and a zoo keeper.

In verse 18 God says to Noah, “…I will establish my covenant with you and you will enter the ark – you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you…”

This is the first time in the Bible that we find the word covenant. A covenant is a sacred agreement entered into by two parties who already know each other. A covenant is not supposed to be broken, ever, but if it is broken then certain negative consequences result.    

God made covenants with other people throughout history as well. He made a covenant with Abraham, with the people of Israel, with king David and, through Jesus, he makes a covenant with us. Whenever we share communion we remember our covenant with God. The rainbow in the sky is the sign of God’s covenant with humanity and the rest of creation, through Noah. Likewise, communion is the sign of God’s covenant with believers, through Christ.

In verses 19-21 of Genesis 6, Noah learns why he is to make such a large ark; it isn’t just for him and his family, it’s like a seed vault for two of every kind of bird and animal as well as every kind of food that is eaten.  

After God has spoken, we read in verse 22 of Genesis 6 that Noah did everything just as God commanded him. This phrase is repeated again a few verses later in chapter 7. The writer of the flood story wants to highlight Noah’s obedience of faith.

By obedience of faith I mean trust in God; taking God at his word and acting on that trust in real and practical ways.

One of the observations made by pretty much every commentator is that Noah is silent throughout the account of the flood. Noah doesn’t say anything the whole time until after the flood is finished.

Noah does not ask God any questions, nor does he intercede with God for the people around him. Apparently he agrees with God that things have got out of hand. Noah doesn’t complain while he is stuck on the smelly ark for over a year, nor does he offer any words of lament for the people who have died. He doesn’t even speak words of thanksgiving or praise when the ordeal is finally over. He simply sacrifices some animals to God without saying anything. 

The only time we hear Noah open his mouth is after he gets drunk and wakes up with a hangover in Genesis 9. Clearly, Noah’s actions speak louder than his words, such is the character of his faith.

In considering Noah’s obedience of faith we are mindful of the cost of that obedience. God did not build the ark for Noah. He told Noah to build it himself. We are not told how long it took, but it must have taken a sustained effort over many years. Noah would have had to cut down large trees, mill them, coat them in pitch, transport the timber to the building site and then construct the ark. Presumably he got his sons to help him, but even so, it is a lot of work by hand.

It’s not like Noah could drive down to Bunnings to buy a kitset and put it together with power tools. Nor is it like the film Evan Almighty where God delivers the building supplies to Evan’s house. Noah’s boat building was hard graft, just as our life of faith can be hard graft at times.

Noah reminds us of another carpenter, the carpenter of Nazareth.  In Matthew 13:44 Jesus tells a pithy little parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

Jesus’ parable here illustrates Noah’s obedience of faith. Noah risked everything on God’s word and it resulted in his salvation as well as the salvation of his family and the birds and animals.

Conclusion:

It’s interesting to me that God involved Noah the way he did. It shows that God works from the inside to renew his creation. He doesn’t fix things from the outside (like a mechanic working on a car). No, God gets small, he gets detailed, and works through a human being to preserve a remnant.      

By doing it this way, God was giving humanity a choice: whether to live or die. Noah chose life. What will we choose?

Let’s stand and sing Cornerstone as we prepare for communion.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • If you have six hours to chop down a tree, why might you spend the first four hours sharpening the axe?
  • What are some practical things we can do to preserve our relationships with others? Is there any relationship in particular you think might benefit from a bit of preserving at the moment?
  • Why do you think the writer of the flood story in Genesis spends so much time focusing on God’s plan to preserve a remnant of his creation?
  • What might God’s detailed instructions to Noah show us about God?
  • What does it mean that Noah was righteous and blameless? How do you think Noah would have been perceived by the people of his day?
  • What do we mean by the term ‘obedience of faith’? How did Noah work out his obedience of faith? How is God calling you to work out your obedience of faith?

[1] Refer Bruce Waltke, Genesis, page 157.

[2] Refer Bruce Waltke, Genesis, page 133.

[3] Refer John Walton, NIVAC Genesis, page 332.

[4] Bruce Waltke, Genesis, page 135.

Tawa Baptist

Good Grief

Scripture: Genesis 6:1-8

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Genesis 6:1-4 – God’s limits
  • Genesis 6:5-8 – God’s grief
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

When you pour concrete you have a certain amount of time to spread and smooth the mix while it is still wet. But once it goes hard you can’t work the concrete anymore. It has gone past the point of no return.

It’s similar with clay. While the clay is wet and soft the potter can turn it and shape it on his wheel. If the clay doesn’t form the shape he wants at first, he can just add some more water and reshape it. But once the clay has set he can’t reform it anymore. It has gone past the point of no return.  

Today we continue our new sermon series on the story of Noah. Last week we heard about Noah’s genealogy. This week we learn a little more about the state of the world, and the state of God’s heart, shortly before the flood. People had become hardened in their evil ways – like concrete or clay they had gone past the point of no return. From Genesis 6:1-8 we read…

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord was grieved that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I am grieved that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

God’s limits:

Have you ever tried to play a game of patience with some of the cards missing?

Have you ever tried to play a game of Scrabble with some of the letters missing?

Have you ever tried to finish a jigsaw with some of the pieces missing?

It’s frustrating isn’t it.

In some ways Genesis 6, verses 1-4 is like that. We don’t have all the pieces and so we can’t get the full picture. We are left guessing about the details.

For example, in verse 2 we read about the sons of God who married the daughters of men. Who were these ‘sons of God’?

The only other time that exact same phrase ‘sons of God’ is used in the Old Testament it refers to angels, heavenly creatures (in Job). Consequently, the early church fathers interpreted ‘sons of God’ to mean fallen angels.

We see this concept of fallen angels in the 1998 film, City of Angels, starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. In this film, an angel called Seth falls in love with a human woman and gives up his immortality as an angel in order to be with her. Sadly, the woman dies soon afterwards and Seth is stuck on earth.

The 2014 film version of Noah’s story, starring Russell Crowe, took a similar interpretation, portraying the ‘sons of God’ as fallen angels called ‘Watchers’ who roamed the earth looking for redemption and a return to heaven.

Most modern Biblical scholars don’t see it this way though. I suppose the idea of fallen angels mating with human women to produce some kind of half angel, half human hybrid[1] seems a bit far-fetched in a rigorous academic environment. So, as an alternative, the experts are more inclined to interpret the ‘sons of God’ as human rulers, sort of like kings or tyrants. They do this on the basis that kings and rulers in the ancient world were sometimes referred to as the ‘sons of God’. Not that people necessarily thought of human kings as divine. It was more a way of acknowledging their status and authority to rule.

Verse 4 tells us the Nephilim were on the earth in those days. The identity of the Nephilim is another puzzle to us modern readers. Apparently they were the offspring of the ‘sons of God’ and human women. In any case, the Nephilim were famous as mighty men and heroes of old. In the book of Numbers, they are associated with giants.

The ancient Jewish readers may well have known what was meant by the ‘sons of God’ and the ‘Nephilim’ but those pieces of the jigsaw are lost to us now, so we can’t say with any certainty who they were. 

What we do know is they were creatures of God; they were not divine nor even semi-divine. And God was not happy with them. If you take the view that the ‘sons of God’ were fallen angels, then these angels had crossed a boundary, between heaven and earth, that they shouldn’t have. And if you take the view that the ‘sons of God’ were human rulers, then these tyrants were oppressing people in an organised way. They were sort of like mafia bosses. God needed to put some limits in place for the well-being of his creation.

With this in mind, we read in verse 3 of Genesis 6 that God said: “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

Reading this in most English translations it sounds like God is putting a limit on the human life span of 120 years. The problem with this interpretation is that some people born after the flood lived longer than 120 years. The Bible tells us, for example, that Abraham lived to be 175.

It could be that the 120 years is a general rule, for which God is free to make exceptions, as in the case of Abraham. Or, it could be the 120 years doesn’t refer to human life spans, but rather to the length of time God would wait before sending the flood. We do notice in other parts of the Bible that God gives people fair warning and an opportunity to change before executing his judgement.

Either way, God’s grace is evident in the limits that he sets. If we take the 120 years limit to refer to human life spans (allowing for the odd exception) then God is actually limiting the spread of evil. If the ‘sons of God’ are not allowed to live too long, then their evil regimes and oppression are also limited. Imagine the damage that would be done if Hitler or Stalin or some other fascist dictator was allowed to live for 900 years or more. It doesn’t bear thinking about. God’s judgment and his grace go together.

On the other hand, if we take the 120 years to refer to the time God planned to wait before sending the flood, then God’s grace is evident in the opportunity he gives for people to come to their senses and change their wicked ways.

Perhaps the more important thing to focus on here is that life is God’s to give and take as he thinks best. God says, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal;  

To be mortal means we die, we don’t live forever. The bodies we are given in this life wear out eventually.

The only reason we are alive is that God has breathed his Spirit into us. Our life is on loan from God. God is free to take back his Spirit (his breath of life) whenever he wants. When God takes a life it isn’t murder. He is not taking something that belongs to someone else. He is taking back what was always his in the first place.

The mistake we human beings always seem to make is thinking that our lives, our time, our bodies, our money, our everything else belongs to us and is ours to do with as we want. But your life is not your own; it belongs to God.

Imagine you are a high flying business executive and your boss gives you a credit card for your expenses. You can legitimately use this card to fill up the work car with petrol, to pay for your hotel room when you have to go on a business trip, to wine and dine clients and to pay for any other work related expenses.

Of course, your boss is the one paying the bill. So if he sees you have been using the credit card for things that are not work related, he has every right to cancel your credit and give you the sack.    

In giving us life, it’s like God has given each of us a credit card. We are free to use the card to buy almost anything we want but there is a limit on that card. We can’t go beyond the limit. God gets the credit card statements. He sees what we buy. He sees the way we spend our life. And if we spend ourselves in a way that is harmful and doesn’t serve his purpose then he is entitled to cut our credit.

Now God is generous and he doesn’t usually give people the sack the first time they mess up. But he is still our boss. He’s the one paying the bill, not us. We are here at God’s expense. We need to be careful to not take advantage of his goodness.

Human beings, in the days of Noah, were misappropriating the life God had given them. People generally were not spending their lives in service to God. They were using the credit card of their life to oppress and abuse others. God is generous and patient but, in his wisdom and grace, he imposes limits. There is a day of accounting with God.

Jesus made this very clear in a number of his parables – in particular the one in Matthew 25 about the Master who entrusted his three servants with large sums of silver. Two of the servants doubled what they had been given and were allowed to keep it when the master returned. The third servant buried his silver in the ground. The master was not happy with him and he lost it all.  

The silver in this parable represents the life and gifts God has given us. The point of the story is not to use our lives to make lots of money. The point is that we should use the life we have been entrusted with to serve and glorify God.

God’s grief:

Sometimes we read the Bible in the same way we might look into a mirror. We just see our own reflection. That’s not always a bad thing. In fact, looking into a mirror can be helpful if we are looking a bit scruffy and need to brush our hair or have a shave. Just as long as we look away when we’ve finished.

Other times though the Bible functions less like a mirror and more like a lens or a telescope that helps us to see God more clearly.

Genesis 6, verses 5-8, act like a mirror and a lens simultaneously. They reflect the human heart and they show us God’s heart at the same time.     

Verse 5 reads: The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

The English language doesn’t really have a single word to do justice to the ancient Hebrew idea of the human heart. In English we think of the heart either literally (as a pump in our chest for circulating blood and keeping us alive) or we think of the heart metaphorically as the place where our emotions come from. We tend to associate the heart with tender or romantic feelings.

But to the ancient Hebrew mind the human heart isn’t just a container for emotions. The human heart is also where thoughts, and moral decisions come from. We could say the heart is the seat of the will. The heart is like the rudder or steering wheel of the soul. Our heart determines the direction we take in life, whether we are aware of it or not.

When we talk about giving our heart to Jesus, what we mean is letting Jesus be the pilot or driver of our life. Letting the hand of Christ take hold of the rudder of our soul to set our life in the right direction.

In Matthew 15:19 Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander. These are what make a person ‘unclean’.”  

Returning to Genesis 6, when God saw the great wickedness of the human race; in other words, when he saw the injustice, the immorality, the murder, the oppression, the slander and so on, he traced all that bad behaviour to its source and it led him straight to the human heart.     

God saw that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. It is difficult to imagine a worse indictment.

If the human heart is like a rudder for our soul, then this means the human heart was continually in the grip of evil. It wasn’t like people only made bad choices half the time. They kept making bad choices all the time. The rudder of their heart was jammed toward violence and greed.

The comprehensive state of evil in Noah’s day foreshadows the Godlessness of society in the days leading up to Christ’s return.

In 2nd Timothy chapter 3, the apostle Paul writes…

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money,boastful, proud, abusive,disobedient to their parents,ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous,rash, conceited,lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

Returning to Genesis 6. Verse 6 tells us,The Lord was grieved that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

Wow. This is what we call the pathos of God. When I read this verse I feel like taking a moment’s silence.

Think about it. The Scripture does not say that God was angry because of the wickedness of the human race. No. It says he was grieved that he had made human beings. He was not enraged. He was filled with pain. The evil heart of humankind deeply affects the loving heart of God. As Walter Brueggemann observes, ‘What we find here is not an angry tyrant but a troubled parent who grieves over the alienation.’ [2]

God is our Father. He is our parent. His heart toward us is love. 

First the Lord saw. He saw the rudder of the human heart was constantly directed toward evil all the time.

Next the Lord felt. God did not just take a quick peek at the human heart. He took a good, long, hard look and in doing so he made himself vulnerable. He felt the grief and pain of human injustice.

Then, having seen and having felt, the Lord decided what he would do. From verse 7 we read: So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I am grieved that I have made them.”

Sometimes people say to me, ‘How could God do that? How could he kill all those people in the flood, not to mention the animals and birds as well?’

While I can understand why people might ask this question, it bypasses what the text is saying. It is not just the world that is in crisis here, it is the very heart of God. The Biblical narrative is more concerned with the deep grief within God.

The flood story is about the hurt God endures because of his wayward creation.

For the people who drowned their suffering was over. For God it continues. We see the suffering heart of God in the person of Jesus on the cross.

The flood story is not primarily about us – it’s about God.

God took no pleasure in the flood. God did not want to drown his creation. I expect he would have preferred to repair the situation if he could. Sadly, things had gone past the point of no return. Like concrete (or clay) humanity had gone hard and become set in its ways – people were no longer malleable. The Lord was left with little choice but to start again.

When an animal dies in a river its rotting carcass contaminates the water downstream. You can’t drink from the river without getting sick. So you have little choice but to remove the dead carcass; then the water can flow clean again.

If human history is like a river, then the wickedness of the human race in Noah’s time, was like a rotting carcass in the stream of human history. God had to remove the corruption and decay so that humanity down-stream wasn’t poisoned. I imagine if God had allowed things to carry on as they were the suffering would have been even greater.

Conclusion:

Our reading this morning finishes on a note of hope. In verse 8, after God has decided to wipe out his creation, we read…

But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord.

It seems Noah was the exception to the rule. Unlike his contemporaries Noah’s heart (the rudder of his soul) was not always directed toward evil. Noah allowed God to steer the course of his life.

Last Sunday we heard how Noah’s father, Lamech, said his son would bring them relief. Lamech may not have realised the full meaning of what he was saying. It’s not just us human beings who are pained by sin. Our sin causes God pain as well. As a righteous man Noah was able to offer some relief to God.  

The fact that God’s heart can be grieved by human behaviour also implies that we can bless God’s heart by the choices we make, we can bring joy to his heart.

What can you do this week to bless God’s heart?

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

Who might the ‘sons of God’ refer to, in Genesis 6:2?  Why do you think the writer of Genesis mentions them?

Why did God set a limit of 120 years? In what ways do we see God’s grace in the limits he sets? 

Where does life come from and who does it belong to? How are you using the credit card (of life) that God has given you? 

What does the Bible mean by the human heart? How does the human heart affect God’s heart?

Why do you think God decided to bring a great flood on the earth?

In what way did Noah provide some relief for God? In what way might you be able to bless God’s heart this week?

[1] John Walton uses the term ‘hybrid’ in his NIVAC commentary on Genesis, although he doesn’t support the view that the ‘sons of God’ were fallen angels.

[2] Refer Walter Brueggemann’s commentary on Genesis, page 77.