Damariscotta Baptist Church

 

 

Genesis 8:1-22

We are reading through the narrative given by God to Moses of how our world began. We have come to the part where the Nephilim, the giant warrior kings of old have been in the land and violence has become so bad and the taking of innocent life has shed so much blood on the land, that the outcry rises up to God. God’s response was to hand creation over to the chaos and ruin that humans and spiritual beings had unleashed and we are at the story of the flood. 

Last week we read how the waters rose up and submerged the land, even over the heads of mountains. It was a full inversion of the seven-day creation narrative. Today in chapter 8 we read about the aftermath of the flood. 

In verse one we are told, 

“Then God turned his attention to Noah and all the wild animals and farm animals with him on the ship.”

We read last week how the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, a direct quotation from Genesis one. The Hebrew word, ruach, meaning Spirit is the same word for wind. The wind/spirit begins to cause the waters to recede and the dry land becomes visible. Again, the very exact language we read in days two and three of Genesis. We get to verse four and we read, 

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

The Hebrew word for “rest” is the verb form of Noah’s name. 

It’s also the same verb used of God when He put the human in the garden, He “rested” them in the garden, Eden, Genesis 2:15. 

God began creation, resting them in a garden on a cosmic mountain of Eden, and now He has replayed this re-creation with the mini-Eden of an ark, resting on a mountain. We have them resting on the mountains of Ararat, on the seventeenth day of the seventh month and the waters continuing to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. 

These are all echoes of both the seven days of Genesis and the ten times God speaks over the course of the seven days of creation. 

It is also significant that the ark rests on the mountains of Ararat. What is interesting is Mount Ararat is an actual mountain, in what we know of as northeast Turkey, near Armenia. However, even more interesting is the play on Hebrew words in this narrative. 

Check this out, after a terrible catastrophe in the human story, where God has de-created the cosmos, and most all living creatures and humankind, that de-creation was carrying along the seed of re-creation in a little Eden refuge, floating on the waters. Eventually, it gets to “rest” on top of a mountain. 

The verb for rest is “nuakhs”, with a guy named “Noakh”, on a mountain called Ararat, which links us back to before the story began, from before the flood, when Noah was born. At his birth, Noah’s dad uttered a little promise over him that he connected to his name. 

Genesis 5:29,

“He named him Noah and said, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.”  

Noah’s dad said Noah’s name will “comfort.” The Hebrew word used here is naham, meaning to bring comfort. Noakh will naham, comfort the people from their work, and from the toil of their hands, from their work with the ground, which was cursed by Yahweh. This is a reference back to the curse God put on the land from Genesis three, when God cursed the land, because of what the humans had done. 

Noah’s father foretells this happening when Noah was born. 

He knew that Noah was going to bring a whole new wave of comfort, or renewal from the curse on the ground. 

Interestingly, when the ark rests on the mountain, you can’t hear the similarity of the word Ararat in English, but the Hebrew word for “has cursed,” Arar and Ararat but are spelled with almost the same letters. 

Arar means Yahweh has cursed the ground, and the name of the mountain is Ararat. 

And what is the first thing we find Noah, whose names sounds like “comfort,” doing when he steps onto this mountain verse 20, 

“Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.”

Noah selects from a bunch of pure animals, he acts like a priest, he chooses a ritually pure goat or sheep and creates an offering, on the altar to Yahweh. And we read that Yahweh smelled the “ri’ach noakh,” in Hebrew means, “rest-giving smell.” 

There’s Noah’s name again, as a word play, a smell that gives rest. It’s like Yahweh smells this offering and like a metaphor it brings peace or rest to Yahweh.

Yahweh’s response to this offering?

 

Yahweh said in His heart, verse 21,

“Never again will I curse the ground because of humans,”

So the ark rests on Mount Ararat, which sounds like the Hebrew word for curse.

 Noah sacrifices life, which at this point in the story is very precious because there isn’t a lot of life, and surrenders it back to God, who in essence is the giver and saver and rescuer of life. 

God sees a human, up on a high mountain, surrendering and giving back to God what God had given in the first place. The results….. A calmness comes over Yahweh, which I think is metaphorical, in place of when he looked at creation, and just saw evil and violence which brought sorrow to Yahweh. 

In this place of peace or rest, Yahweh upholds creation and says,

“even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”

Why?

Because of a human who has surrendered what’s most precious, there on a high place. 

Back in the garden, because Adam and Eve chose not to listen to the voice of God and chose to listen to the voice of Satan, their consequences consisted of God cursing the ground. From that point on humans would live in an environment that was hostile to them and chaotically pushed against them. 

Noah, on the other hand, does something that is counterintuitive, sacrificing a life that for all extensive purposes would have seemed wasteful, but he chooses to turn its life over to God as an act of surrender. 

As if Noah realized, the truth, that all life is God’s in the first place and to have God save his life and the life of his family and all the lives of all the animals aboard the ark, a sacrifice of thanks was the least Noah could do. 

God understood Noah’s sacrifice and God also understood that even though God had performed the ultimate curse on the ground by creating the flood, it did nothing to change the state of human hearts, still….

 

every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood,

Humans had unleashed a tidal wave of violence and Yahweh accelerated it to its terrible end. 

Yahweh de-created. 

Yet, when Noah gets off the boat, Yahweh still recognizes that human hearts were still bad. Yet, Yahweh decides He would not go through another de-creation again. 

Why?

Because this guy, Noah, surrenders the most precious thing, at this point in the story, animal life. Yahweh responds with being able to work with a human who will surrender. As long as there is a human that will be open to listening to God’s wisdom, and partnering with God as the story moves on. 

This story of surrender of a blameless life, on top of a mountain will be echoed in future stories in God’s narrative. 

Not only does God provide Noah with a covenantal promise to never again destroy all living creatures He goes on to say, in verse 1 of chapter 9, 

“Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”

A replay of Genesis one. 

Check in time.

Surrender on a cosmic mountain is a transformative moment for Noah. Many of us have had “mountain top experiences.” A time when we stepped away from our daily routine and went on a retreat of some sort that focused on God. 

When we surrender our time and our agenda to God, we often rediscover who we are and gain a better understanding of who God is and how He wants to be an integral part of our lives. Not just on that retreat, away from the normal way of our life, but an integral part of our everyday life. If you haven’t experienced a mountain top experience, or if it’s been a while, I encourage you to consider scheduling one in. 

Take a look at your 2025 calendar and find a time that you can set aside for you and God. It can be a weekend retreat, a day or even an hour or two with just you and God. Talk with God about it and see what you can do. 

Surrender doesn’t have to wait until you get on top of a mountain, actually we are called to a daily surrender of sorts. We should wake each morning recognizing that whatever we have, whatever we are able to do, is solely because of God. 

We no longer have a tradition of sacrificing the spotless goat or lamb, Jesus covered that. But we may have things or people in our lives that have taken “first” place, over our relationship with Jesus that need to be surrendered. 

Take some time to reflect and may we follow Noah’s example and be a person who is willing to surrender the most precious things, which in reality belong to God in the first place.