Somewhere along the line, most of you have heard the story of Noah and the ark.  You probably remember that God told Noah to build an ark, and that Noah obeyed God and build the ark. 

          The animals went into the ark with Noah, along with his family, and they were saved from the flood, and afterwards God sent the rainbow to signify his promise that he would never again flood the world.

          Even in this secular day, it’s not unusual to find Noah’s Ark themes in bedding and artwork to decorate a child’s room.  There are the animals and there is the rainbow, and a nice grandfatherly Noah holding out his hand as the dove returns with the olive branch.

          It’s a sweet Bible story to tell children, emphasizing God’s care for Noah and his family and for the animals.  And anyone who has ever seen a rainbow in the sky can’t help loving the fact that God chose the rainbow to symbolize his promise.

          But when we read the story as adults, it’s a bit more complex, and even disturbing.  It’s disturbing because the reason God sends the flood is that God is so upset over the behavior—the wickedness!—of the entire human race that he decides to wipe them out.  Completely.  No mercy—just wipe them out.

          So when the rains come, and it rains for forty days and forty nights until the earth is entirely flooded, every man, woman and child and every animal on the earth is destroyed.  Except for Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives, and the animals that God selected.

          What kind of a God would do such a thing?  To be perfectly honest, it is tempting to just ignore passages like this one in the Bible and not preach on them.  But sometimes we need to tackle the difficult passages in the Bible, because they are there for a purpose.

          The Flood story is really a story about the ugliness of sin and God’s redemption.  It’s also a story about God’s heart. This Flood story comes very early in the Bible, in Genesis 6 – 9.

          The book of Genesis begins with the story of creation—how God created the world and everything in it, and then created humans, male and female, in his own image, and how God called everything that he had created “good.” 

It’s important to know that creation started out good.  Very good.

          But God gave humans freedom of choice, and almost the first thing they did was to disobey God. 

          God gave them a beautiful garden to live in with all sorts of good things to eat, but God told Adam and Eve not to eat from one particular tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  But of course, they did.  So sin entered the world.

          By the time of Noah, sin had become so rampant that God was very disappointed.  Here’s how God is described, in Genesis 6:

 5 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

          Notice that this is not an impassionate God who sternly sits in the heavens in angry judgment.  Instead, God was grieved, and his heart was filled with pain. 

God is good, but now his own beloved creation has turned on him.  “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” 

          But God sees one bright spot—a man named Noah.  “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”  So God makes a plan that will allow Noah and his family to be saved.  Noah and his family will be a new beginning for planet earth.

          Sometimes God’s ideas are pretty strange.  Even after all these years, we’re still amazed by God’s plan for saving Noah and his family.  It’s really a pretty crazy story.  I think that’s why kids like this story. 

God tells Noah to build this enormous boat—it was bigger than a football field.  God tells Noah exactly how to go about this project.  But even if Noah had his three sons working with him, this was quite some challenging project! 

          We don’t know how long it took them—maybe close to a hundred years.  Noah was 500 years old before his sons were born, and when the flood came, Noah was 600 years old.

          As I said before, this story is disturbing to us because God was so unhappy with the world that he decided to wipe everyone out. 

But consider this.  That ark the size of a football field can’t have been a secret.  And don’t you think that when the neighbors came around to ask what Noah was up to that he told them what God had said? 

Don’t you think Noah suggested to his neighbors that they might want to shape up and turn their lives around before the flood came?  The fact that people know God is not happy with their behavior does not necessarily cause them to change. 

It was that way then and it’s still that way today.

          So Noah built that huge ark, and when he was finished, God caused the animals to come.  The entire story is found in chapters 6 – 9 of Genesis, and I encourage you to take the time to read it for yourself. 

After the animals went into the ark and Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives went into the ark, God closed the door.

          It occurred to me that maybe after God closed the door, God slapped a little more pitch on the outside of the boat to make sure it would float. 

At any rate, it started to rain.  It rained for forty days and forty nights and the earth was completely flooded.  And every man, woman and child and every animal on the earth perished.

          There was mercy for those inside the ark, but none for those outside.  Disturbing as this is, it speaks to us the reality of the consequence of sin. 

Not only then, but now, the Bible teaches us that sin leads to death.  Romans 6:23 says “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

          Salvation through Jesus Christ is like being called by God to step onto the Ark and be saved.  Jesus paid for our sins through his death on the cross. 

Because of Jesus, we have complete forgiveness.  We are saved from the death that we deserve because of our sin.  Our sin earns us death, but Jesus saves us.

          After a hundred and fifty days, the water began to recede.  Noah and his family and the animals stayed in the ark for about a year before God opened the door and let them come out onto dry land. 

          Then, Noah built an altar where he worshiped the Lord, and God said

 “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.  And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

          “As long as the earth endures,

          seedtime and harvest,

          cold and heat,

          summer and winter,

          day and night

          will never cease.”

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, and made a covenant with them.

And now, Genesis 9:

8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth.

 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:

13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind.

Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

          It says that God promises to be good to all the earth—humanity as well as animals— whether they respond to him with obedience or not, forever. 

          In the next few weeks of the season of Lent, as we prepare our hearts for Easter, we’re going to look briefly at the history of the relationship between God and humanity. 

In this story of the new beginning symbolized by the rainbow, God promised that he would never again send a flood to destroy all life.  As we follow the story of the Bible, we will see that God continues his promises, because of his great love.

          We will find that God is faithful to his promises, even when we are not.  But God still grieves when we turn our backs on him and go our own way.  Just as in Noah’s day, when God sees us going our own way and refusing his gift of grace, his heart is filled with pain.

          But in spite of his pain, God sent his son, Jesus, into the world to suffer and die for our sins, so that we might live.  Romans 5 says it this way: 

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:  While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

          It is that love that we celebrate when we partake of communion.  Jesus invites everyone to his table—rich and poor, educated and uneducated—whoever we are, Jesus says to each of us, “Come.”

          If you have never invited Jesus to be your personal lord and savior, I invite you to just come forward while Vern is singing and pray with me.  It’s as simple as coming up and sitting beside me so I can pray with you. 

Jesus longs to forgive all of your sins and to welcome you into his loving arms.  He loves you more than you can ever imagine.  Come to Jesus; he’s waiting for you.

Prayer:

Jesus, we are so grateful that you willingly gave your life so that we might be forgiven and cleansed from all our sins.  As we take communion today, help each one of us to truly understand in our hearts what it cost you to pay the penalty for our sins.

Lord, if there are those here who have never invited you to come into their lives and forgive their sins, I pray that they would come today, so they might know you in their hearts, and that they might have complete forgiveness of all their sins.  May they not be afraid, but may they know that your love casts out fear.    Amen