Genesis 8:1-19
The New Creation

  1. God begins to recreate
    1. God remembered Noah (1)
      1. Covenantal language - He remembered the covenant he had made with Noah to save him (6:18)
      2. Much later, Israel will groan under a yoke of slavery to Egypt
        1. and God will remember his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 2:24)
        2. And he will begin to act on the terms of that covenant to give Abraham's descendants the promised land.
        3. This is only one of many similarities between God's saving Noah in the flood and his saving Israel through the Red Sea
      3. Noah may have felt alone
        1. bobbing up and down helplessly on the waters of God's wrath
        2. The sun blotted out, the earth formless and void
        3. wondering if God would ever come and prepare this earth as a dwelling for him
        4. And God, who had been speaking to him all along, has been silent.
      4. But he needn't worry.
      5. God is a covenant keeping God. He is faithful
        1. And Noah's faith is a testimony to us. He kept waiting for the Judge of all the earth to show up.
        2. He was not fooled by appearances, but he clung to the promises of God and waited.
        3. Even so, God has promised to rescue you in the day of his judgment and great wrath
          1. He will bring you into the new creation, the new heavens and the new earth
          2. Though everything you see and feel should tell against it, yet God is faithful
          3. Cling to that promise and know that he will bring it to pass
        4. Do things look bleaker for you than they did for Noah?
          1. Has the whole world been uncreated around you, come crashing down around your head?
          2. Does God seem distant and all his words a mere memory?
        5. Consider that this is a picture of Christ in his death and resurrection
          1. Passing through the full force of God's judgment
          2. Finally crying out, My God, My God why have you forsaken me?
          3. He went down to the grave, to death itself. The waters of death closed over his head.
          4. Are things that bleak for you
            • I say this not to shame you as some would. As though the point of this is "Compare your puny troubles to those of Christ or even of Noah and be ashamed."
            • Rather I say it to comfort you
              • What evil has overtaken you in this world? Your Savior has already gone through it (Noah is a picture of what that means)
              • How remote has God seemed and perhaps seems even now? To Noah he seemed remote. And so to Christ. You have company. You have sympathy. You have a Savior who knows your weakness.
              • Yet what happened to Noah? What happened to Christ?
          5. Yet God remembered his covenant with his Son and by his Spirit raised him up.
    2. God's wind passed over the earth (1b)
      1. Play on words "wind" and "spirit" are the same word in Hebrew (and in Greek for that matter)
      2. So this evokes the Spirit of God hovering over the waters when the earth was formless and void (1:2)
        1. The Spirit of God was then waiting for God's command to create a place suitable for man
        2. And now that Spirit-wind waits again for the signal
      3. The Israelites could not fail to see in this their own situation
        1. Were they not saved in crossing the Red Sea when a wind arose and divided the waters so that the dry land appeared
        2. And they crossed as on dry on land
        3. This is a creation/redemption event just like with Noah
        4. And it will happen again at the river Jordan
        5. They have been constituted a new people; It is God who has made them and redeemed them for himself
      4. May we not as well see our own situation?
        1. Israel's salvation is a picture of our own
        2. So if Noah's is a picture of Israel's, Noah's is a picture of a picture of our own.
        3. Christ Jesus laying in the grave, the judgment waters having closed over his head
        4. Then God remembers his covenant with Christ (and with YOU! in him) and sends his Spirit to raise Christ up from the dead.
        5. This is what it means to be put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit (1 Peter 3:18)
        6. or manifested in the flesh and justified in the Spirit (1 Timothy 3:16)
      5. So the wind-Spirit of God begins pushing those judgment waters back, dividing the waters just as on Day 3 of the first creation so that the dry land appears.
    3. The ark came to rest (4)
      1. A pun on Noah's name
        1. "Noah" means rest
        2. And the ark came to a "m'noah," a resting place
      2. Noah, through the vehicle of the ark, has been granted rest
        1. That promise originally extended on Day 7 has been fulfilled in a picture in the ark coming to rest in the 7th month.
          1. the turbulence of God's judgment has passed
          2. The day of salvation is here
        2. This is like Israel being brought into the Promised Land by Joshua and the Lord granting them rest on every side
        3. Yet Hebrews said Joshua didn't really give them rest
        4. But Jesus did
        5. So this is a picture of the work of Christ who cried out "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest."
        6. This "rest" is the heavenly rest, the goal of those who trust in the promises of God
          1. The sinner has been wiped out from the earth
          2. All things have been made new
          3. Christ has already taken you there by faith
          4. Don't get caught up in the things of this world or hope for this world to be renovated. There is no rest here.
          5. But Christ is coming to bring that rest to you.
      3. So the ark rests on the top of a mountain (up in the sky, the heavens, if you will), but is still surrounded by waters
      4. Noah still waits to see how God will complete what he began.
  2. Noah tests the new creation (6-12)
    1. The raven - a failed experiment
      1. Needs to know if waters have subsided
        1. window on top of ark (6)
        2. doesn't yet dare open door in side
        3. He can't see from that vantage point whether the waters have subsided
        4. So he needs to devise a test to see whether the judgment is truly over. Is it safe to come out now?
      2. He sends out a raven (7)
        1. but the raven is a carrion eater
        2. It can survive off the corpses of animals on mountainttops, animals killed in the flood
        3. So when the raven doesn't come back, that tells him that enough of the mountaintops are exposed that the raven can survive.
        4. But he needs to know more.
    2. The dove (8-12)
      1. The dove feeds off of vegetation and insects that dwell in the valleys; it cannot live off this mountaintop food.
      2. the dove also calls to mind the Holy Spirt descending upon Christ as a dove at his baptism
        1. Noah's baptism is over
        2. And now he sends yet another picture of the Spirit hovering over the surface of the waters to see whether God has been pleased to accept him and bring him into a new creation.
      3. Attempt 1 - no rest (8,9)
        1. dove found "no resting place" (9)
        2. Another pun on Noah's name
        3. The rest is not yet fully realized
        4. There is a sort of "already" and "not yet" going on here
          1. Noah has already found rest in the ark, seated in high places
          2. but the rest has not yet been fully brought in
          3. So we have already found rest in Christ and are seated in heavenly places with him.
          4. But we wait anxiously, like Noah, straining to see when that rest will be completely established.
        5. So he waits 7 days
          1. And if we calculate the dates that we've been given out, it's always a Sunday, the first day of the week that Noah sends the dove out.
          2. The new creation idea is unmistakable
          3. It is also a foreshadowing of the resurrection
      4. Attempt 2 - olive branch (10-11)
        1. The branch is freshly plucked; the trees have begun to grow again. (11)
        2. The lower hills, where olive trees grow, have again been exposed.
        3. He waits another 7 days
      5. Attempt 3 - New creation is complete
        1. The dove does not return (12)
        2. New creation is complete
    3. A new year and a new creation
      1. It's the first day of the first month, New Year's Day
      2. It's the first day of the week as well, the first day of a new creation
      3. He pops the roof off the ark and has a look for himself
      4. The ground is free from moisture
      5. And in the 2nd month, 27th day, the ground was completely dry
      6. He's been in the ark since the 2nd month 17th day of the previous year (11)
      7. The months, by the way are lunar months, about 29.5 days each.
      8. So that's 365 days, a full solar year.
      9. The earth's gone around the sun and come back new
      10. For an entire year Noah waited patiently
        1. He did not grumble against God
        2. He did not question God's decisions or judgment
        3. He did not become restless
        4. He entrusted himself to God and believed in God's promises and waited for God to fulfil them in his time
        5. It is no wonder that he is held out as an example of robust, vigorous faith.
      11. Do not fear! Be like Noah. Trust that God will finish what he's begun.
  3. The New Creation is populated (15-19)
    1. God gives the command (15)
      1. Noah sent the birds out to help himself understand what God was doing
      2. But he was not seeking to decide for himself when the ordeal was over
      3. Rather, it is the command of God that sends Noah and his family and all the animals out of the ark.
      4. God sent them in and shut the door. God must open the door and let them out.
      5. So Noah's salvation is the work of God from start to finish, even as ours
        1. We take an intense interest in it
        2. We long to know when it will be completed
        3. But God is the one who makes the decisions
    2. All creatures leave ark
      1. Just as God commanded the earth to bring forth living creatures of all sorts
      2. Now he commands Noah, and the ark, to bring them forth
      3. They come out, two by two, just as they existed at the end of the first creation.
    3. They are commanded to be fruitful and multiply
      1. Just like at the end of the first creation
      2. Everything has been put back in place, just as it should be
    4. So Noah obeys (18,19) - The perfect cap to his example of faithfulness.
  4. The event considered in the light redemptive history
    1. Christ has risen again into a new creation
      1. This is a picture of his work
      2. Isaiah 65:17-19 - "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; For behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing, And her people a joy.19I will rejoice in Jerusalem, And joy in My people; The voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her, Nor the voice of crying.
    2. We have become that new creation in Christ
      1. 2 Corinthians 5.17 - Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
      2. This has happened at your baptism, of which Noah's ark is a picture. Galatians 6:15 - For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.
      3. Ephesians 2:10
      4. Ephesians 4:24 - and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
      5. So walk according to this knowledge
    3. We look forward to the bringing in of that new creation
      1. 2 Peter 3:11ff. - Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? 13Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
      2. Revelation 21:1ff.

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