Studies

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Studies in Genesis
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Remembered by God Gen 8v1-22
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Introduction
Some time ago I heard a young mum describe her
most embarrassing moment. She'd taken her baby
shopping, returned home exhausted, put her feet
only to be confronted by a mother-in-law who
couldn't find the baby! He had been left at the
shops! The baby was recovered quite oblivious to
the fact that he had been abandoned. The feeling
that we have been forgotten, abandoned by others
is one of the most difficult emotions to cope
with. Especially if those who've forgotten us are
particularly close. An aged parent receives no
birthday card from their grown up children, a
husband forgets a wife's anniversary, a close
friend forgets to reply to your letters. The
feeling of worthlessness, which being forgotten
produces is a desperately sore thing to come to
terms with. This is particularly true of the man
or woman of faith who feels abandoned by God.
Was that an emotion Noah wrestled with?
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A Long Internment
Noah was in the ark for over a year cf 7.6 with
8.14-15. For 40 days and nights there'd been a
torrential downpour. The water lay on the earth
for150 days before the flood waters began to
recede, followed by a long drying out period. For
a great part of that time it must have seemed to
Noah that he was living in a floating tomb. He'd
obeyed God, when he told him to enter the ark.
God had not told him how long he would be there.
Would Noah become an insignificant statistic in
the great cosmos that God had called into being?
How long does it take for the temptation, that
one has been forsaken by God, to creep into the
soul? Did Noah think, "God has abandoned me?
Now look at 7.24-8.1 "The waters flooded the
earth for 150 days BUT GOD REMEMBERED NOAH."
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A Long Internment
Are you familiar with the early life of Joseph?
He'd been given a dream by God, which seemed to
promise a significant future but he was sold as a
slave by his brothers. Sold into Egypt, he was
then framed for a crime he didnt commit. As a
result he was cast into prison. Where was the
bright future God had promised him? His sense of
worth and self-esteem suffered one body blow
after another. Then a means of deliverance seemed
to appear on the horizon after he had
successfully interpreted the dream of the kings
steward he hoped for an ealrly Release but in Gen
40v 23 we read The chief cupbearer, however,
did not remember Joseph he forgot him. Where
was God in all this? But, GOD remembered Joseph
in prison and two years later Pharaoh received a
disturbing dream, which in turn brought Joseph
to Pharaohs attention.
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A Long Internment
Or think of the life of David. As a young man
he'd been anointed king of Israel. But he was
outlawed by Saul and forced to live in deserts
and caves. He was under constant pressure from
Saul, who wanted to kill him. And in Ps13.1
David cries out, How long oh Lord. Will you
forget me forever? How long will you hide your
face from me. How long must I wrestle with my
thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me? Many
Christians have wrestled with the temptation
that they are "God forsaken". It happens as we
allow our circumstances to shape our thinking
about God. We reason, "Because of this great
difficulty, and its unrelenting pressure God
must have forgotten me."
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A Long Internment
What are we to do when we feel like that? We need
to learn to rest upon our knowledge of God's
great faithfulness. On one occasion God was
wanting to impress upon his people that he was
not the kind of God who would abandon them and he
used the very graphic description which is found
in Is 49.15-16 Can a mother forget the baby at
her breast and have no compassion on the child
she has borne? Though she may forget, I WILL
NOT FORGET YOU! See I've engraved you on the
palms of my hands".
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Gods Remembrance
God doesn't simply remember his people in their
distress and then do nothing. Or say, "Isn't it a
pity that your struggling". God's remembrance
involves ACTIVITY. In what way is God actively
involved on behalf of Noah? First, he dealt with
the sore circumstances GRADUALLY. God sent a
wind to dry up the waters enabling the ark to
come to rest on Mt Ararat. The whole process took
time! God did not pull the equivalent of a large
bathplug to allow the water to drain away.
Deliverance came by degrees and not instantly.
Scripture warns against "despising the day of
small things Zech 4.10. What is this slow
process designed to teach? What characteristic
does God intend to build into our characters? A
patient dependency upon himself. Do we need to
learn to preserve our souls in patience?
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Gods Remembrance
Secondly, patience needs encouragement. It is
hard to walk through dark valleys without it cf.
Psalm 23.4. How was Noah encouraged? Although
the raven had failed to return with any useful
intelligence, the dove sent out from the ark
brought back an olive branch. Imagine how
thrilled Noah must have been. He knew not only
that the waters had receded to the lower plains,
where the olives grew but that the flood had not
killed off vegetable life. A minister was in
great need of encouragement because of the sore
circumstances of life when an elderly Christian
lady reminded him of 1Pet.1.6 "though now for a
LITTLE while you may have to suffer grief in all
kinds of trials". She said the word little was
the most important one in the text.
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Gods Remembrance
Finally, God provided Noah with ASSURANCE.
Imagine some of the fears lurking in Noah's
heart. Was it safe to leave? Would more rain
fall? A massive flood would have been enough to
undermine anyone's confidence. God spoke words of
reassurance in v16, "Come out of the ark". Come
into a new world with confidence for it is God,
who calls you. This was the first time he had
heard God's voice for over a year. At Gods
command he had no hesitation to venture into
uncertain territory. God knows how to encourage
us to step out into the unknown. He also knows
best how to speak words of assurance to our
hearts, when he wants us to step out confidently
into a new situation which he has prepared for
us.
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Noahs Response
How then does Noah respond to the God, who
remembered and delivered him? You might think
that the first thing Noah would have done after
release from the timber tomb would be to build a
shelter for his own comfort. But the very first
thing he did was build an altar! By doing so he
was saying that God came first in his life. That
was how Noah responded to the faithfulness of
God, who remembered him. Do we give God that kind
of priority? Many people cry to God for
deliverance from difficult situations and when
deliverance comes, God is forgotten. If we
belong to Christ and enjoy the deliverance from
sins punishment and power, should God not be
the priority of our lives? We often try to
squeeze him into some convenient cupboard and it
is he who is forgotten.
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Noahs Response
Secondly, Noah sacrificed on the altar he had
built. He expressed his gratitude in kind with a
sacrifice of thanksgiving for deliverance. It
cost him to do that! The animals, which were to
be sacrificed, were those the Bible calls clean,
i.e. domestic animals of which 7 males and
females were taken into the ark. Noah depleted
the stock that was to form the basis of a new
domestic herd. He didnt say, "I'll wait until
the herd increases in number and then give to
God, it will be too costly to give at this
stage." The man whose heart has been gripped by
the faithfulness of a God of grace is the man who
gives sacrificially to the work of God.
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Noahs Response
Finally, he petitioned God to withhold judgement.
Implicit in his act of worship, was intercessory
prayer. Some very interesting light is thrown on
this incident in Ez.14.14 It is a passage that
deals with the restraining of the judgement of
God and the restoration of God's favour. We are
told of 3 great intercessors, who at different
times in history cried to God in the context of
judgement, they are Daniel, Job and Noah. Noah
is cited as an example of a great intercessor in
the context of judgement.
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Noahs Response
What was the prayer that Noah made. What was the
effective intercession inspired in the heart of
the man by God's Spirit? What was the plea made
by the man, who had sailed through the most
awesome judgement of God? I believe it was that
God would not judge his world in a similar
fashion again. That was the petition, which
associated with the sacrifice appeared as a sweet
aroma to God. That God might restrain his hand
from wringing out his judgement upon the earth in
a similar fashion in future. And of course
that was exactly what God wanted for never
again would he act in this way. God works
through the prayers of his people.
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Conclusion
What challenge does this bring to bear in our own
lives. Surely the person who has experienced
God's faithfulness and the grace of God's
deliverance will not only give God the place of
priority in his life. They will give
sacrificially to the one who has delivered them.
Burly they will also devote themselves to pray
that God would withhold his hand of judgement in
order that others would also experience his great
mercy.
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Conclusion
The story is told of John Welch, a Scottish
Covenanting minister, who gave himself much to
prayer for those under his care. It was his
practise to get out of bed and pray for the
people in his parish. His petitions wakened his
wife, who scolded him for praying at such an
unreasonable time. He replied, with tears in his
eyes, "I have 3,000 souls under my care and I do
not know how they stand with Christ." He
himself had tasted the grace of God's salvation
and his response to the God who had remembered
him was to pray that God would remember and be
merciful to others.
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