The
8th chapter of Genesis begins with Noah and his family and all the
animals, still floating in the ark. “But
God remembered Noah and all the wild animals, and the livestock…
and He send a wind over the earth, and the water receded“.
At the end of a long trip, we are ready to get home- imagine how Noah
felt inside the ark with all those animals! God’s timing is not our
timing, He will not be rushed. We read “the
waters receded steadily from the earth and at the end of one hundred
and fifty days the water had gone down… and the ark came to rest on
the mountains of Ararat“.
Next we read, “After
40 days Noah opened a window“,
I’m sure that was a welcome event. We are told Noah sent out a raven,
but it found no place to land. Then a dove, and it found no place to
land, finally after waiting seven more days, this time when the dove
returns “there
in his beak was a freshly picked olive leaf“.
“He
waited seven more days and sent out the dove again“.
We are so impatient, we can hardly stand the pace of this chapter,
but we never get the sense that it bothers Noah. Our tendency is to
rush God’s plan for our life, it seems that while God may be trying
to teach us something, we are looking ahead and miss the lesson at
hand. What is He trying to teach you where you are right now?
After
nearly eleven months, “Then
God said to Noah, COME OUT OF THE ARK“.
And what is the first thing Noah does? “Then
Noah build an altar to the Lord and taking some of the clean animals
and clean birds, he sacrificed burn offerings on it“.
And what a great picture we see, “The
Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart, NEVER AGAIN
WILL I CURSE THE GROUND BECAUSE OF MAN, EVEN THOUGH EVERY INCLINATION
OF HIS HEART IS EVIL FROM CHILDHOOD“.
Even though He knows our heart, God extends us His mercy, not
because we deserve it, but rather because it pleases Him. In Romans
12:1, the apostle Paul explains to Christians, “I
urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your
bodies as living sacrifices, acceptable to God, which is your
spiritual service of worship“.
Christ was the perfect sacrifice once and for all, we do not require
anything else to be made acceptable to God. But Paul’s point is, we
can worship God by living lives that honor God.
The
chapter closes with, “As
long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night will never cease“.
This is both a promise of God’s faithfulness, and notice that the
world is a different place from the world Noah knew before the flood.
There will now be different seasons and no longer will man live 900
years. Whatever season you are in, take the time to wait for God’s
timing.