The Sun Shines Again Genesis 8:1-19

All of God's attributes are equally wonderful. We depend on every one of them for our life, and this includes our present life and our life with him forever.

Anyone who has walked with God long enough knows that God is faithful.

He will not leave you in the dark or in the cold in your most difficult times. And once you become one of his people, you are safe in him forever.

Over the past month, we have been looking at the story of Noah's flood. Two weeks ago, we looked at the destruction of the entire world.

And that is something, as I mentioned, we cannot sugarcoat. The Lord judged the world thousands of years ago by sending a flood that destroyed this entire place.

It was a complete annihilation. And this was God's rightful judgment of the world for their great sins.

But if we just focus on God's justice in pouring out his wrath on the earth during the flood, we might fail to see his grace toward his people.

Because we must see that in the flood story as well. God picked out

Noah from the entire world. Noah was a righteous man.

He belonged to God. God promised to preserve him and his family through this global catastrophe.

Noah trusted God. He knew that God was faithful and he was going to deliver.

And what we are going to see in Genesis 8 this morning is the faithfulness of God as the floodwaters subside from the earth and the human race starts anew.

So we are going to be looking at Genesis 8 verses 1 -19. And so please turn in a

Bible with me to that place. And I always encourage you to follow along with me so that you know right where we are.

I know some people just like to listen and that's fine too. But it is always easier to follow along if you are right there with us.

So Genesis 8 verses 1 -19. And our big idea is the waters subsiding demonstrates the faithfulness of God.

The waters subsiding demonstrates the faithfulness of God. And we are going to see three ways how.

The first way how is God remembers his people. As I mentioned two weeks ago, the waters covered the entire earth.

Even the tallest mountains were under the water at least 20 feet.

What we are going to see in these verses is that God does not forget about Noah and his family. Which shows God's faithfulness.

And we see this right at the beginning of Genesis 8 where it says, But God remembered

Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark.

This whole time as God destroys the earth, his plan is to show his grace in blessing

Noah and his family. The way he does this is by stopping the flood.

Noah needed to trust that this indeed was going to come to an end. Because you might think

Noah might have had doubts along the way where he is thinking, Okay, I hope the Lord brings these waters to an end.

I hope he brings this flood to an end. Noah needed to trust that it would. And we have an application right from the get -go here.

In your own life, you may wonder if God remembers you. We all have those times in our life where it seems like God is so far away.

And you may be tempted to think that maybe he is sitting this one out. I remember saying this very thing when

I was in my early 20's. I was going through a challenging time in my life. Where I had some health issues and the doctors didn't seem to have any answers for what was going on.

But now as I look back, I can see that he was with me every step of the way in the darkness.

He was using all of that to produce something in me. Because God, of course, always has the bigger picture. And he is always thinking about what he is going to make us into.

Where he is sending us in the future. The Lord never forgets about his people.

And we need this reminder from this text that the Lord remembers all who belong to him.

As it says here, God remembered Noah. After sending the flood on the earth, the

Lord uses natural means to lower the waters. And I'm going to highlight this here in a little bit.

But this is significant. He uses natural means to lower the waters. The first thing he does is send wind.

The second half of verse 1. And God made a wind blow over the earth.

And the waters subsided. The winds distribute the waters causing them to be lowered in different places.

Then the Lord stopped the flow of the water. This is what verse 2 says. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed.

The rain from the heavens was restrained. Two weeks ago, we talked about how the water did not just come from the clouds.

Rain from the clouds. It actually came from below the ground too. Think about how much water.

It was pouring rain from the skies and it was also coming from under the ground. The Lord prevented rain from falling on the earth and the water was no longer shot out of the ground.

Anyone who has experienced a flood will tell you that the last thing they want to see is more rain.

We saw that in Houston recently. They had the flood waters and the waters were standing and rain came.

And then they saw the forecast and they saw more rain is coming. Because obviously if more rain comes, that means the waters aren't going to subside.

They're going to stay at a high level. During the flood in Noah's day, there was a tremendous amount of water on the earth.

Thousands and thousands of feet high. In order for the flood to come to an end, there needs to be no rain over a significant period of time.

And that is precisely what the Lord did. Verse 3 tells us how long the Lord took to prevent waters from coming on the earth.

And the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated.

The length of period the waters covered the earth was mentioned two weeks ago at the end of chapter 7.

And this verse repeats it. The waters covered the earth entirely for 150 days.

If you do the math here, that's about five months. Imagine waters covering

Eureka Center from June through October. That's five months.

That'd be a long time. After 150 days, the waters started to lower a bit.

At this point, you could see the top of the mountains. That's all at this point. Just the top of the mountains.

Everything else is covered. And in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

Now we can see how precise this recording is. Five months to the day, the waters began to lower.

And we are once again reminded of how carefully this history is written. The author of this, who

I believe is Moses, he is very carefully recording this.

Because this history was passed down to him. They knew the exact days when the waters came and when the waters started to subside.

And you will notice that the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. This word, rest, is significant.

If you can remember back to chapter 5, Lamech, this was the good Lamech by the way, he had a son named

Noah. And he named him Noah for a reason. Because the name Noah means rest and comfort.

And so when the author uses this word here, he's using this on purpose. He's using this to say that the ark came to rest on the mountains.

Showing that comfort was coming through this man, Noah. Because through Noah, God was using him as an instrument to bring rest and relief to the world by being spared in order to start the human race afresh.

Lamech, of course, did not know how Noah would be a blessing to the world. But now we're seeing how this is coming about.

God uses this man to build the ark to preserve the human race. And he's bringing rest and comfort to the world.

Verse 4 says that the ark landed on the mountains of Ararat. People have often wondered, where is the ark?

And people have searched for the ark for centuries. No one has ever found it. And people think that the mountain of Ararat in modern -day

Turkey is actually the location of where the ark is. The truth is, we do not know the precise location of where it landed.

The region of Ararat, as mentioned here, is a region that is not only recorded in Genesis 8, but also in the records of the

Assyrians. This region covers southeast Turkey, southern

Russia, and northwest Iran. One of these mountains was named Mount Ararat later on.

And people came to believe that this is where the ark landed. But the problem is, verse 4 does not mention a specific peak.

It mentions a region. It says the mountains of Ararat. So, we don't know the precise location where it landed, but we do know the general region where it landed.

Probably somewhere in southeast Turkey is where the ark landed, which is a very mountainous region.

The ark landed on this unknown peak in the seventh month. It was not until the tenth month that the tops of all the mountains in this area could be seen.

This is what verse 5 says. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

This is the first way that the waters subside and demonstrates the faithfulness of God. God remembers

Noah by bringing the flood to an end, by causing the waters to recede.

The second way that the waters subside and demonstrates the faithfulness of God is God's people wait on the

Lord. And we're going to see this in verses 6 through 12. This shows the faithfulness of God because Noah, as one of God's people, knew that he could trust the

Lord. The Lord had proven from the past that he is faithful. And what we will see is that Noah waits on the

Lord in the following verses. In verse 6, So after they saw the top of the mountains, 40 days had passed.

For the first time in a long time, Noah opens the window. Now this is not the door that we talked about, the door that shut on the ark.

This would have been a window that was built on the ark. And he sends out a bird, verse 7, and sent forth a raven.

It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. He first sends out a raven.

Pay very close attention to the types of birds he's sending out here. What we will see in this passage is no reference again to this specific bird, the raven.

According to Leviticus 11 .15, the raven was an unclean animal. Remember we talked about Noah took clean animals and unclean animals onto the ark?

The raven was not a clean animal. And by sending it away without returning, this may be a symbol of getting rid of the unclean and starting fresh.

Because if you think about this, they're leaving the old world behind. The wicked world that was destroyed.

And so by sending this unclean animal away, they're saying, okay, we're getting rid of this to move on from the past and to move forward in the future.

So I think that's the significance of the author highlighting the raven here.

And you have to remember, this isn't just history being recorded. The author is recording history and he's trying to tell us something through this.

There's a meaning behind these passages, this narrative. And in verse 8, Noah sends out a different bird, a dove.

This is what it says in verses 8 and 9. Then he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground.

But the dove found no place to set her foot. And she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth.

So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. The dove is sent out and it finds no place to land because the waters still cover the earth.

And there may be symbolism here as well. The dove was considered a clean animal by the

Israelites. If you look later on in their history, in the sacrificial system that was set up by God through Moses, only clean animals could be sacrificed.

In Leviticus, the dove was sacrificed. And actually even before the sacrificial system was set up by God through Moses, Abraham lived about 500 years before Moses.

And God told Abraham to sacrifice a dove when God made a covenant with Abraham.

Because the dove was a clean animal. At the end of verse 9, it says that Noah put out his hand and took her, the dove, and brought her into the ark with him.

So the dove was a welcomed guest while the raven was not.

So this may symbolize the pure start after the flood and getting rid of the past, getting rid of the wickedness of the past.

To further this interpretation, Jesus calls us in Matthew 10 .16 to be innocent as doves.

So the doves in scripture always have a positive connotation.

And Jesus may have been thinking about this very passage in Noah's story, in Noah's ark, to tell us to be innocent as doves.

So you see this symbolism here. And as we already mentioned, Noah is waiting here.

This is significant because God, of course, has infinite power.

Once this flood came to an end, when the waters were pouring out on the earth from above and from below, God could have stopped the flood immediately.

But he didn't do that. He uses natural means. And you might ask the question, well, why does he do that?

Because he cares about what is being produced in Noah and his family through this. He makes them wait because he cares about them, because he wants to do something in them.

Noah waits another seven days, and then he sees some positive signs in verses 10 and 11.

He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening.

And behold, in her mouth was a fleshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.

An olive leaf had grown in the time after the flood, and the dove snatched it, signifying that the waters were subsiding.

But Noah's waiting was not done yet. Then he waited another seven days, and sent forth the dove.

And she did not return to him anymore. And once the dove did not return,

Noah knew that the waters had subsided. And they were getting very close to the point where they could leave the ark and get on dry land.

But what we must see here is that the Lord made him wait to get to this point. He uses natural means because he wants to produce something in them.

He wants their trust to be built in the Lord. Now in the summer of 2012,

I was a pastoral intern at Mound Free Church. And my pastor was out of town that week, and I got a phone call from the fire department saying that our church had flooded.

No pun intended here. It had flooded because it was really warm that week.

During that time, there was a heat wave coming through the Midwest, and the temperatures had reached about 103 degrees.

And the sprinkler system in our church building is set off when it reaches a certain temperature.

And as we know, heat rises, and it's set off the sprinkler system. And so the entire interior of our sanctuary and other places in our building were flooded.

And so we had significant damage. Thankfully, we had insurance, which is always good to have. But for a five -month period, we could not meet in our building.

And so we met in an elementary school several miles down the road. But the Lord used us for our church in a great way.

He had us wait five months to get back into our building. And it was a special season in our church because we had to set up chairs every

Sunday. We had to get all the musical instruments out. We didn't have a pulpit because we didn't have a building.

And we had to set up and pack up every single Sunday. But the Lord used that for our church because He had us wait.

He had us wait on Him. And I know that He did something through our church during that time.

And you might have something in your life that you are waiting for. And you are wondering if the

Lord is going to deliver. We should not lose sight that God has us wait for a purpose, as He had for Noah and his family.

He desires to show His faithfulness, and He desires to produce greater faith in us through the process of waiting in order that we would trust in Him and that He is producing good in us.

Imagine if God just gave us everything right away. We wouldn't have maturity. It's during the waiting when

God really works in us. So this is the second way. The water subsiding demonstrates the faithfulness of God.

God's people wait on the Lord. Noah waited on the Lord. And God's people know their

God, that He is faithful to them, and that they can wait on Him, and they should wait on Him. The third way the water subsiding demonstrates the faithfulness of God is the

Lord is good to those who wait on Him. We'll see this in verses 13 through 19.

At this point in the flood narrative, the sun begins to shine. Literally and figuratively.

I titled the sermon this morning, The Sun Shines Again, because it was darkness for months and months as the waters came over the earth.

And it is worth giving you some perspective right now. Noah and his family have been in this boat for a very long time.

We're going to find out how long in the following verses, starting in verse 13. In the 601st year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.

The 601st year mentioned here is talking about how old Noah is. Noah was 600 when the flood started, and now he's 601.

The waters dried up off the ground in the first month on the first day of the month. That's the new year.

So this new year, why is the author highlighting the new year here? I think he does this because when we hit the new year, it can feel like a fresh start.

The fact that the waters dried up on this day is symbolic of a fresh start for the human race.

The second half of verse 13 says that Noah removed the covering. This would be the door.

The door opened and they saw the dry ground. Now, they still would have been floating on the water at this point, but there was so much dry ground at this point that they could actually see it in so many places.

So the earth officially dried out not too long after this, in verse 14.

In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out.

Here, we can see how long it was until the first drop of the flood to the waters being completely dried up on the earth.

Chapter 7, verse 11 tells us when the flood started. It started in the second month on the 17th day of the month.

Here, in verse 14, it says the ground was dry in the second month on the 27th day of the following year.

So if you do the math here, the whole flood lasted one year and ten days.

That's a long time to deal with a catastrophe. So if you think your plans sometimes get messed up when things happen, their plans really were changed as a result of this flood.

This year -long event changed the whole world. But God preserved Noah and his family and all the animals.

The focus of this third point is that the Lord is good to those who wait for him. Noah and his family spent a year on this boat.

Once the floodwaters stopped from above and below, they had to wait over seven months until they could leave the ark and walk on dry land.

Could you imagine how stuffy it would have been in this ark? Could you imagine how horrible the smell would have been?

Yesterday in our house, Brianna has a way better smell than I do, and she smelled something. And she said, we've got to find the smell.

And we found the smell, thanks to her, and we were able to get rid of it from the house. They didn't have that luxury here.

If they had problems on the ark, they couldn't just get rid of it.

They were stuck in for a very, very long time. They had to trust the Lord. But they knew the

Lord preserved them, and he was going to do good to them. He wasn't going to send any more rain.

He wasn't going to leave them in there to a point where they ran out of food. So they waited on the

Lord, and the Lord is good to those who wait. And this is what the Lord commanded

Noah once the door was opened and the dry land was visible. We'll see this in verses 15 through 17.

You and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you, bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.

The Lord is good to those who wait for him. All who were on the ark made it out safely.

Verses 18 and 19 says this. So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him.

Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark.

One verse that came to my mind as I was reading this was Lamentations 3 .25. It says,

The wait is worth it.

As the Lord is working in your life, it is always worth it. Everyone on the ark experienced the faithfulness of God and the goodness of God.

And this too will be your experience as you wait on the Lord with whatever it is that you may be waiting for.

You may have a financial situation that you are waiting to be resolved. You may have a health issue.

You may have a conflict with someone, but you haven't been able to resolve it yet. Or you may have a loved one for whom you've been praying, but you've seen nothing happen.

No visible results. As a church, we're building towards the future right now.

We need to be patient. We need to wait on the Lord, realizing that the results aren't always visible, and we just need to keep being faithful because we know that the

Lord is good to those who wait on Him. The message here is to wait.

And if we have a holy desire, and I want to make a point here. Sometimes we can say we want a new

Cadillac. I'm not saying that the Lord is good to those who wait for some fancy car or something like that in your life.

I've been waiting for the Vikings to win a Super Bowl for a very long time. I'm not talking about that, as great as that would be. And by the way, this year could be the year.

The message of this is to wait on the Lord for holy desires. Be patient. Trust in what

He is doing and in His timing. Isaiah 26 .3 says, I experienced this in my own life.

I had a desire to meet a godly wife, and I had to wait a long time, at least it felt like a long time to me, to meet

Brianna. Months would go by, years would go by, until I finally met her when

I was 26. And it occurred to me that I had to wait for her, because she was five years younger than me, and she had to be old enough for me to be able to be with her.

But finally, May 20th, 2013, that's the first day that I met

Brianna. And as I say, the rest is history. The wait was worth it. One of the fruits of the

Spirit is to be patient. And as you wait, you trust in Him. Your faithfulness grows.

Your faith in the Lord grows. Wait in the Lord knowing that He cares for you. He hasn't forgotten about you.

He is doing good to you. During this time, seek Him. As Lamentations 3 .25

says, The Lord is good to those who wait on Him, to the soul who seeks Him. Noah and his family experienced the benefits of waiting as they walked on dry land.

So will you as you wait on Him. You will experience benefits as you wait.

You benefit from what God is producing in you. And the Lord may give you what you are waiting for, if your desire is a holy one.

That's what we need to realize, is that during a period of waiting, God is doing something in you.

It's not a wasted time. Sometimes God accomplishes more during times of waiting than when the wait is over.

It's really remarkable to think about that. In the big picture, too, as Christians, all

Christians are waiting to be with the Lord in Heaven. That's the story of our life. We're waiting.

We're waiting for the Lord to return to this earth as well. And as we live in this world, we wait through all the trials.

But the Lord will bring you to Him in His timing. Noah and his family went from a wicked world to a new world.

A world where Christ would come and redeem a people for Himself. And they experienced the faithfulness and goodness of God as they waited for Him to accomplish this.

All who belong to Jesus are a part of this glorious fresh start that started in Noah's day and will go on forever.

As I already mentioned, we are waiting for this consummation where all of God's people are with Him forever.

Because if you belong to Jesus, it's already started. But it's not consummated until you meet Him. Wait on the

Lord knowing that He does good to you and you seek Him in the times of waiting. He does good to you in the waiting and beyond.

So this is the third way. The water subsiding demonstrates the faithfulness of God. The Lord is good to those who wait on Him.

What we saw this morning is that the water subsiding demonstrates the faithfulness of God in three ways. God remembers

Noah. God remembers His people. His people wait on the

Lord. And the Lord is good to those who wait on Him. Over the past month, we have seen the character of God shown in different ways.

In one sense, He does not clear the guilty. God sent a flood on the wicked world.

In another sense, God is gracious to His people and gracious to humanity by preserving the human race.

God is right in all of His judgments, everything He does, whether by judgment or extending grace.

And nothing is more wonderful than experiencing God's grace as His child. The God of the universe takes care of you through the dark waters of your life, just as He took care of Noah and his family.

And so I hope that you see that in this text, that this author, I believe, is trying to get this across.

The Lord uses these natural means to cause the waters to subside so that Noah and his family would wait on Him, so that their faithfulness would grow, so that their character would be built up through this.

And whatever you're facing in your life, the Lord is using that as you wait on Him to do good to you.

The Lord is good to you as you wait for Him. Now next week, we will look at God's covenant with Noah, and we'll see how that directly impacts us.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father in heaven, I pray,

Lord, that we would see here that there's a reason, Lord, you have us wait. And it is so difficult to wait, but we know that we can wait because You are faithful, and we trust

Your faithfulness. And I pray, Lord, that if anyone here today is questioning Your faithfulness, Lord, that that would be resolved, that their faith would grow in You.

And that's a part of the process of growing in the faith, is to trust You more and more every step of the way, through all the trials that we face, through the periods of waiting where it seems so perplexing.

So, Lord, we ask for Your help in this. I pray that You would build this in this church. And even,

Lord, as we wait for what You're doing in this church, I pray, Lord, that You would produce much in us.

And Sean and I were having a conversation this week about, Lord, You're building us up before we can even take future steps going forward.

And You've been doing that, Lord. We've seen it over the past nine months. And we pray that You would produce more and more in us, and that we would trust