Genesis 8 Lesson 1: The Flood Recedes, The Ark Rests, and God Remembers Noah

God remembers Noah. In this lesson we walk through Genesis 8 and watch the floodwaters begin to recede as the ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat. We look at the Hebrew word zakar (remember) and what it reveals about God’s covenant faithfulness. We trace Noah’s raven and dove, the ancient Near Eastern flood accounts that parallel and contrast with the biblical record, and what the Church Fathers taught about this moment of new beginnings. We also examine Noah’s altar and sacrifice, and how this scene points forward to Christ’s greater and final sacrifice. If you want to understand the flood narrative with historical depth, biblical accuracy, and a Christ centered lens, this lesson is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back. We've spent the last two lessons in Genesis chapter seven. We watched the door close. We watched the fountains burst open and the floodgates of heaven pour out. We watched the water prevail relentlessly over every mountain under heaven. We watched all flesh perish. And we left Genesis chapter 7 with eight people floating on a world that had become a sea. The water prevailed upon the earth 150 days. And now we step into Genesis chapter 8, and it opens with what I believe to be one of the most beautiful sentences in the entire book of Genesis when we read, But God remembered Noah. God remembered Noah, and the world begins to change. So today we're going to slowly look at those first five verses of Genesis chapter 8. We're going to go and look carefully at what divine remembrance actually means. We're going to trace the echo of Genesis chapter 1 that rings through verse 1 here in chapter 8. And then we're going to step into one of the most fascinating questions in biblical archaeology. Where did the ark land? And what Apologetics says about this gets really exciting because the biblical account does not exist in a historical vacuum. It is surrounded by ancient testimony from historians and archaeologists and geologists who took this claim very seriously. So let's read the text starting in Genesis chapter 8, and let's look at the first through the fifth verse. Grab my Bible here. Starts off and says, But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. And God caused a wind, it's a very important word, wind, to pass over the earth, and the water subsided. Also the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky was restrained, and the water recedeth steadily from the earth, and at the end of one hundred and fifty days the water decreased. In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. The water decreased steadily until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains became visible. So let's start here when we read the words, but God remembered. And this is the most important use of the word but since Genesis chapter 6, verse 8. There in Genesis 6.8, it gives it says that Noah found grace, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 1, it gives us, but God remembered Noah. And so there's two words here, two times the word but is used, and both of them are pivots. Both of them are the turning point of the entire narrative. The first but rescued Noah from the coming judgment. The second time the word but is used, we see Noah being rescued from an ongoing judgment. But God remembered Noah. And everything that follows in Genesis chapter 8, the wind, the receding waters, the resting ark, the dove, the dry ground, the open door, the altar, the promise, it all flows from that one sentence. But God remembered. And that is the hinge of the entire flood narrative. Now, before we explore what this phrase actually means, we need to clear away what it does not mean. When we say we remember something, we usually mean that we had forgotten it and then we came back to it. So God did not forget Noah. God is all-knowing, he knows all things simultaneously. He cannot forget. Noah did not slip God's mind for just one second. For the 150 days while the water prevailed, God knew who Noah was. It's not anything like what we would think in our language. So what does the text mean when it says God remembered? The Hebrew word for remember carries a meaning far richer than a simple mental recall. When God remembers in the Old Testament, it always leads to action. It means to take note with the intention to act, to turn one's attention towards someone or something with the purpose of covenant, to move from consideration to intervention. In other words, God remembered Noah means that God turned his full attention toward Noah and began to act on Noah's behalf. The same word appears through the most pivotal moments in all of Scripture. Consider in Genesis chapter 19, verse 29, God remembered Abraham and then he rescued them from Sodom. And so remembering means that he was going to act. Genesis chapter 30, verse 22, God remembered Rachel and opened her womb. Exodus chapter 2, verse 24, God remembered his covenant with Abraham and acted to deliver Israel from Egypt. In 1 Samuel chapter 1, verse 19, God remembered Hannah and she conceived Samuel. In every case, the remembering of God is not a mental event, it's an act of a covenant. The moment that God turns his active, purposeful, delivering attention toward his people. Remember, Noah had been in the ark for over five months, 150 days of silence. But then God remembered. And the silence was not abandonment, the waiting was not forgetfulness. The stillness inside the ark was the prelude to God's attention turning toward his servant Noah. And notice what the text includes in God's remembering. But God remembered Noah and all the beast and the cattle that were with him in the ark. So it wasn't just Noah or the eight people, all the beast, all the cattle, every creature in the ark. God remembered every animal in that vessel. Every creature he had called to come to Noah, he now calls to life again. And this is consistent with everything that Genesis teaches about God's relationship to creation. He is grieved when it is corrupted. He provides for it through the ark, and he remembers it when the judgment is over. Consider the verse Psalm 36:6. It says, Your righteousness is like the mountains of God, your judgments are like the great deep. O Lord, you preserve man and beast. Man and beast. The God of Genesis chapter 8 is the same God of Psalm 36. He preserves both. And from an apologetic standpoint, this is very significant. The God of the Bible is not merely concerned with human souls, he is concerned with the whole of his creation. Now, the very next thing that happens after God remembers Noah, before a single word of instruction is given, before a single act of human obedience, God acts. When we read this, and God caused a wind to pass over the earth and the water subsideth. A wind over the water and the water subsides. Now stop just for a second. And go back to Genesis chapter 1, verse 2. It says, The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. The Hebrew word for spirit in Genesis chapter 1, verse 2, is the same word for wind: spirit, wind, and breath. It's all the same word. In Genesis chapter 1, the Spirit of God moved over the surface of the waters, and creation emerged from the chaos. In Genesis chapter 8, God calls the wind to pass over the earth. And so what we see there is a recreation emerges from the flood. So Moses is doing something very deliberate here. The same word, the same movement, the same creative power. The flood did not end creation. The flood reset creation. And the same spirit that created the world in chapter 1 is now recreating it in chapter 8. And this is one of the most elegant literary and theological connections in all of Genesis. We see creation, chaos, and a new creation. Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 7, and Genesis chapter 8. And in each, we find the Spirit of God over the waters every time. Now, here's something that the text models for us in terms of how God works in the world. God caused the wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided. So God used a natural mechanism, wind, to accomplish his supernatural purpose. And this is very significant for the apologetics of creation and providence. Skeptics will sometimes frame the question as either or. Either God acted miraculously and science is irrelevant, or a natural process caused the changes and God is irrelevant. So Genesis, when written and read properly in its context, refuses that false choice. God caused the wind. The wind caused the water to subside. Both are true simultaneously. Divine action, natural process, not competing, but cooperating, working together. And this is the biblical model of how God operates in the world, not as a replacement for natural processes, but as the sovereign cause behind and through them. The great theologian B.B. Warfield called this the occurrence of divine and natural causation. God working his purposes through the mechanisms that he built into creation. Science studies these mechanisms. Theology identifies the cause behind the mechanisms. And so Genesis chapter 8, verse 1 is one of the clearest and earliest pictures of how those two work together. Then verse 2 brings the flood mechanism to its close. The same two sources that opened the flood are now closed. The fountains of the deep shut, the floodgates of the sky closed, and the rain restrained. So the same God who opened the floodgates closes the floodgates. He is sovereign over both, the the sending of the flood and the stopping of it. He is not a God who sets events in motion and then steps back to see how they're going to work out. He governs every stage. And here's something that every apologist should note. The text here describes the closing of the fountains and the floodgates as a deliberate divine act, a natural, a natural, not a natural abatement, but something that God does. So God closes them. The flood did not simply run out of water. The Bible says that God stopped the water. That means the God who judges is the God who also sets the limit of judgment. He does not let it run indefinitely. And this speaks directly to one of the greatest questions about suffering and divine judgment. Does God set limits on judgment? Does he close the fountains? Genesis chapter 8, verse 2 says, yes, he always closes them. Now, let's move on to verses 3 and 5. We see the recession of the waters, and it's described with a very specific word in the Hebrew. The water recedeth steadily from the earth. The Hebrew here literally means going and returning. What it's describing is a rhythmic, tidal, uh back and forth motion, not a sudden draining, a gradual, steady recession. And this is significant for the physical picture of the floods. And the water did not drain into some giant hole in the earth. It receded wave by wave over an extended period of time. And the pace is given precisely. From the end of the reign to the tops of the mountains appearing, approximately three to four months of gradual recession, slowly, steadily, deliberately, God's timing, not man's urgency. Now let me pause on the chronology once more, because from an apologetic standpoint, this is very significant. Moses gives us the precise points in Genesis chapter 7 and Genesis chapter 8. Year 600, month 2, day 17, the flood begins. 40 days of rain, 150 days the waters prevail. Year 600, month seven, day seventeen, the ark rests on Mount Ararat. Year 600, month ten, day one, the tops of the mountains are visible. Forty more days, then Noah opened the windows. Seven days the first dove sent out. Seven more days the second dove sent turn and returned with an olive branch branch. Seven more days, the third dove sent out and did not return. Year six hundred and one, month one, day one, Noah removes the ark's covering, the earth is dry. Year six hundred and one, month two, day twenty-seven, Noah and his family and the animals leave the ark. The total duration of the flood event just over a year. No ancient mythology records an event with this level of chronological consistency. The Gilgamesh epic contradicts itself on basic timelines. The Atrahasis epic is vague. This is the record of someone who was either there or who had access to the records of someone who was there. The precision is not literary decoration, it is the mark of a true historical account. That's important. Now, let's talk about the mountains of Ararat. In verse 4, it says in the seventh month on the 70th day, the ark comes to rest. The ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. This is a name that has captured the imagination of explorers and archaeologists and apologists for thousands of years. Where is this mountain? What does the text actually say? What does history say? What does archaeology say? And so let's take each question very carefully. The first thing to notice is what the text actually says. The mountains of, not the mount, but the mountains of. And this is a crucial distinction. The Hebrew is plural, the mountains. This is uh talking about a region, not a specific peak. The region corresponds to what ancient sources call the kingdom of or artu. It's it's pronounced U-R-A-R-T-U. That's how it's spelled. U-R-A-R-T-U. So it's U-R to. Um, in the historical kingdom, it was centered around the highlands of what would now be considered Turkey, Armenia, northwestern Iran. And the name appears in Assyrian inscriptions going back to the 9th century BC, and it corresponds directly to the biblical error. This is not biblical mythology. This is a historically attested geographical region. Now, what we call that region today is a 16,854-foot volcanic peak in eastern Turkey. And it was not universally identified as the landing site of the Ark in ancient times. That specific peak is known in Turkish as the Painful Mountain or the Mountain of Pain. The text says that the Ark landed in the mountain range at the Ararat region. The specific peak is never named, but the region is named. Now, consider what ancient historians said about this region. And here's where apologetics gets genuinely fascinating because the landing of Noah's Ark on the mountains of Ararat was considered a matter of religious dispute in the ancient world. I'm sorry, it was not considered a matter of religious dispute. It was considered more of a matter of common historical knowledge. Let me give you some examples. Josephus was a Jewish historian writing in the first century, first century, and he records in his Antiquities of the Jews, he said the Armenians called this place the place of descent for the ark being saved in that place. Josephus is telling his readers in the first century that the remains of the ark were a known landmark. This is pretty amazing things. In the third century BC, a Babylonian priest and historian, whose name I will mispronounce badly, but it's Barosius, wrote a history of Babylon in Greek. He records a flood tradition virtually identical to the structure of Genesis. And he states that the remains of a ship that can still be found in the mountains of Armenia, and that people scrape pitch from it and use it as ambulance against evil. Now, this is an extraordinary piece of testimony because Verosius was not a Jew or a Christian. He was a Babylonian historian and priest writing for Greek readers. And he records the preservation of an ark's remains in the mountains as common historical knowledge. There was Nicholas of Damascus in the first century. He was a Greek historian. Again, this is before the time of Christ, a Greek historian and close associate of Herod the Great. And here's what he wrote: He said, There is above the country in Armenia a great mountain called Barus, upon which it is reported that at the time of the flood, many who fled were saved, and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore upon the top of it. Again, that was a Greek historian. Jerome in the fourth century, Jerome is the great biblical scholar who translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. That's where we get our Latin Vulgate from. Jerome confirms the Armenian location and notes that the region was well known in his time at the landing site of the Ark. Even the medieval explorer Marco Polo, traveling through the region in 1271, records this in his travels. He said, In the heart of the Greater Armenia is a very high mountain shaped like a cube on which Noah's Ark is said to have rested, wherefore it is called the Mountain of Noah's Ark. So you're looking across 1,500 years of history from Barosius to Marco Polo, writers of different nationalities and regions and agendas consistently place the resting of Noah's Ark in this particular highland mountainous region. This is not the testimony of believers defending a faith position. It is the convergent testimony of ancient historians treating this as a geographical fact. Now, let's just mention the modern archaeological searches. Because the search for Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat has a long and complicated history. The more you read about it, the more confusing it gets. And I want to handle this uh appropriately and honestly because this is an area where sensational claims have sometimes outrun the evidence. What we do know with confidence is that this Ararat region is historically attested as the landing area. And this is from ancient testimony. This is not modern speculation. The specific peak, known today as Mount Ararat, is geologically complex. It's covered in glaciers, it's highly unstable, really making the preservation of ancient wooden structures very unlikely. Not impossible, but very unlikely. Multiple expeditions have reported seeing or taking pictures of structures on the mountain, but none has produced any verified or peer-reviewed physical evidence of arc remains. And there's been several expeditions in the 20th century, including U.S. military aerial reconnaissance in World War II, that reported structures on the mountain consistent with a large wooden construction. Now, what we should say with intellectual honesty is that the absence of confirmed physical remains does not disprove the biblical account. A 4,000 year old wooden structure in an area with glaciers and active volcanoes would be extraordinarily unlikely to survive intact. The ancient historical testimony about the Ark's remains being visible. In the first century BC is genuinely significant. It was apparently not always buried under glaciers. And the convergent ancient testimony is a stronger apologetic than any modern claimed sighting. And honestly, we don't need to find the arc to establish the credibility of the flood narrative. The internal chronological precision, the convergent ancient testimony, and the consistency of the account with geological and anthropological evidence is stronger arguments than any relic that can be found. Now, let's move on just a little. Here is something that most people who read Genesis chapter 8, verse 4 have never noticed. Notice the wording here. In the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. Seventh month, the 17th day. Now, in the Hebrew calendar, that would later be established through the law of Moses, the Passover was celebrated on the 14th day of the first month, the feast of first fruits, the day of commemorating the first resurrection offering. They all fell on the 17th day of the first month. But in the pre-Exodus calendar, which Genesis follows, the calendar began with a different month. What Genesis calls the seventh month corresponds in the later Exodus-based calendar to the first month, the month of Passover and first fruits. That means that the ark came to rest on the day that in the later biblical calendar would correspond to the feast of first fruits, which was a day of new beginnings, the day of the first resurrection offering, the day that Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 20, calls Christ the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. Whether this is uh this correspondence is intentional by God, and many scholars believe that it is, the ark came to rest on a day that the rest of Scripture associates with resurrection, new life, and first fruits. The old world was over, the new world was beginning, and the ark carrying the seed of all future life came to rest on the day of first fruits. Now, look at verse five, where the tops of the mountains become visible. Here in verse five, it gives the next chronological marker. The water decreased steadily until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains became visible. And so the tops of the mountains become visible. Go back to Genesis chapter 1, verse 9, just for a second. Genesis chapter 1, verse 9, where we read, Then God said, Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear, and so it was. Let the dry land appear. And now the tops of the mountains are becoming visible. Creation, day three, the dry land emerging from the waters, recreation after the flood, the mountaintops emerge from the flood waters. Moses is threading a deliberate connection between Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 8. The flood is not the destruction of creation. The flood is a recreation, the same sequence, the same God. And inside the ark, Noah sees the mountaintops, the first solid ground since the rain began, the first sign that the judgment is ending and something new is emerging from the waters. And here is something that is easy to miss in these first five verses. Noah does nothing. God sends the winds, God closes the fountains, God restrains the rain, the water recedes, the ark comes to rest, the mountaintops appear. And Noah does not appear in these verses as an actor at all. He is inside of the ark. He's waiting and he's trusting this entire time. After 150 days of prevailing waters, after five months of floating on a dead world, Noah waited for God to act. He didn't try to force the door open. He didn't try to swim for land. He didn't try to take matters into his own hands. He was simply just there waiting. The man who built the ark for 120 years in obedience to God's command is now sitting in the ark for months, just trusting God's timing. And this is one of the most important lessons in the flood narrative for the life of faith. There is a time for building, there is a time for obeying, and there is a time for just sitting inside the ark and waiting for God to act. In Psalm chapter 46, verse 10, it says, Cease striving and know that I am God. Now, let's tie this in a little bit to modern apologetics and the new creation, because we've traced several connections between Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 8 so far in this lesson. So let me lay them out side by side because the pattern is more comprehensive than most people realize in just a casual reading. In Genesis chapter 1, verse 2, the spirit moves over the surface of the waters. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 1, God causes a wind over the earth. In Genesis chapter 1, verse 9, dry land appears from the waters. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 5, mountaintops appear from the floods. In Genesis chapter 1, verse 11, you have vegetation appearing. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 11, the olive leaf appears on the dove's return. In Genesis chapter 1, verse 20, birds appear. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 7 through 12, a raven and dove are sent out. In Genesis chapter 1, verse 28, God blesses humanity and commissions them. In Genesis chapter 9, verse 1, God blesses Noah and commissions him. In Genesis chapter 1, verse 31, God sees all that he made as good. In Genesis chapter 9, God establishes a covenant over the new creation. And so there's a parallelism here that is deliberate and exact. Moses is not writing two unrelated stories. He is writing one continuous story of creation, the fall, and then recreation. And the recreation of Genesis chapter 8 points forward to the ultimate recreation that you and I are part of. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17, the Apostle Paul writes, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. Some of your versions will say new creation. The old things passed away, behold, all things have become new. That's the pattern of the flood. You're created, the old world is there, then the old world ends, a new world begins, and then the spirit moves over the waters. That's the pattern of salvation. We're called, we take the step of faith, we're saved, we get baptized, which means that we're in the moment of salvation, we were a new creation, we're reborn in Christ. And then that's the way that the flood narrative plays out. That's the way that salvation plays out because God is always in the business of a new creation. He has been since Genesis chapter 1, and the flood proves that he's not finished. And here's one of the strongest apologetic arguments that emerges from Genesis chapter 8. The God of Genesis, consistently across the entire narrative, keeps every commitment that he makes. He said the flood was coming, and it did. He said that he would establish a covenant with Noah, and he did. He said he would bring Noah through the flood when the waters prevailed, and God remembered Noah. Now the skeptic who reads Genesis chapter 8 might ask, why did God wait 150 days before acting? If he's all-powerful, why didn't he just end the flood immediately? The answer is the same answer we give for every question about divine timing. God's purposes operate on a timeline that don't always match ours. The 150 days of prevailing waters were not evidence of God's indifference. They were a necessary time of completion for the judgment, a full measure of consequence for the full measure of corruption. And when the measure was complete, God remembered. And when God remembered, he acted, always without fail and always in his time. This is the God who is worthy of trust during these long periods of silence, because he has never once forgotten a promise. And he has never once remembered someone and then failed to act. And in all of this, we actually see a lot of New Testament tie-ins. The divine remembering of Acts chapter 8, verse 1, God turning his covenant attention toward his people to act, runs as a thread through the entire Old Testament all the way into the New Testament. In Luke chapter 1, starting in verse 54, we read, He has given us help to Israel, his servant, in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers to Abraham and his descendants forever. In Mary's song at the announcement of the uh of the birth of Jesus, it describes the coming of Christ as an act of God's remembrance. God remembered Israel. God remembered his promise to Abraham, and then in the fullness of time, God sent his son. And this is the same pattern that we see back in Genesis chapter 1 and then Genesis chapter 8. The waters prevailed for 150 days, and then there were 400 years of slavery in Egypt, then there were 400 years of silence between the Old and New Testaments, but then each time we read, God remembered, and each time that God remembers, God acts. This is what Paul said in Galatians chapter 4, verse 4. It says, But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, the fullness of time, God's remembering, moving from attention to action at exactly the moment his purposes required action. Take all of this and remember the ark at rest, and then the rest that remains. The ark came to rest in the mountains of Ararat. It rested. The Hebrew word for rest is the same root as the name Noah, rest and comfort. Noah, the man of rest and comfort and his ark came to rest. And so the name fulfilled the event. And the rest of the ark points forward to the rest that is still coming. We read this in Hebrews chapter 4, starting in verse 9. Verses 9 and 10 says, So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered the rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did rest from his. The ark rested, Noah rested. And one day the people of God will enter the eternal rest that Genesis has been pointing toward since the seventh day of creation. But God remembered Noah. That means that God remembers you, not as a mental event, but as a covenant that he turns as full and purposeful, delivering attention toward his people and he acts. Now let me wrap this up for today. If you're in a season right now that feels like 150 days of prevailing water, 400 days of silence. And if the silence from God feels so long, if you're floating and waiting and wondering when all of this will go away, when the waters will receive, think about those words. But God remembered. He remembered Noah in the silence. He remembered Israel after 400 years of slavery. He remembered humanity in 400 years of prophetic silence. And then he sent the wind, he closed the fountains, and he brought the ark to rest. He remembered his people. And when he turns his attention toward you, the waters will begin to subside. Now our next lesson will be in Genesis chapter 8, verse 6 through 19. And there in those passages, we're going to read about Noah opening the window, the raven going out and not returning, the dove that goes out three times. And we'll see Noah wait for the water to be gone, but for God's word to come out. And it does, by the way, the same word as the beginning come. I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson. Until next time, I hope that you have a blessed day.