This transcript was auto-generated. 

One of the most famous lines in all of English poetry comes from a poem called, The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner written in 1834 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It goes like this, “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.” Not written to describe the flood of Noah’s time but it seems to me a perfect description of what I imagine Noah saw when he looked out of the ark. The surface of the earth is covered with water even the peaks of the highest mountains are covered. If Noah looked out the window of the Ark what he saw was water, water everywhere but not a drop too drink, however, that view poses some questions. For example, what happened to all that water if the water covered the earth, where did it go and how long did it take to disappear. That is a real interesting question and then of course there is the whole issue of what this means to us today? Is there any spiritual lesson that we can learn from this? These questions are answered for us in Genesis chapter 8. The last few podcasts covered the 7th chapter of Genesis and described for us the gradual increase of water. Genesis chapter 8 now describes the gradual decrease of the water and that's what I want us to begin to look at today. The opening verses tell us.

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. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down.

(Gen 8: 1-3) 

This word remembered is used in the Old Testament as an idea that God shows kindness, or God or shows favour to protects or delivers someone from danger. This passage begins with and the Lord remembering Noah and it tells us, God sent a wind to pass over the earth and the waters receded. I find this rather interesting as it appears that God did not use supernatural means to suddenly cause the waters to recede. The water that had dominated the earth for 150 days now began to recede gradually, naturally. God allowed nature to take it course and for the earth to return naturally to normal. Verse 4 continues the story. 

and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 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.

(Gen 8: 4-5) 

Finally, the ark comes to rest on the high point of a mountain range. Ararat is a range of mountains close to what we today call modern Turkey and the highest mountain in that range is 16,254 feet high. (Taller than any mountain in Western Europe) As a matter fact Ararat is the Hebrew word for the region, we today call Armenia. I found one other rather interesting fact when preparing this message. Some clever fella has done some computer modelling and decided that the geographical center of the earths land mass is located within a short distance from Mount Ararat. If that's the case, then the ark landed right in the place where from a new population could spread easily over all the earth. Verse 6 continues the story.

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.

(Gen 8: 6-7) 

These verses are beginning to describe the water subsiding from the surface of the earth and what Noah did to in order to figure out when it was OK for them all to get out of the ark. Which he does by sending out birds. First, he sends out a Raven and he waits 40 days. Now the whole point of the Raven being the first bird is because it is a scavenger. The raven could survive by eating carcasses floating in the water. Next he releases a dove and we will look at what happens after he does that in the next episode.