Noah's Ark Part 4

(Genesis 7:17-24)

So for 40 days they listened to this violent storm outside and then for 150 days they just floated. They couldn’t steer the Ark and there was just water everywhere.

The Bible doesn’t say God spoke to Noah during this time, so they just floated and waited. There are periods in our lives when it seems like God is silent and we’re just waiting, aren’t there? We wonder why, when we’ve committed our lives to Christ it sometimes feels like God has withdrawn from us. These times might be the times when God is teaching us to live by our faith, not our feelings. That after we have been obedient, we must also be dependent.

When God seems silent, Anne Graham Lotz says, we need to go back to the last time He gave us instructions and make sure we followed them in obedience, to the best of our understanding. If we did, we then just depend on Him to see us through.

And finally, in Genesis 8:1, the Bible says, “God remembered Noah.” This doesn’t mean He had ever forgotten him. In Bible language “God remembered” means God helped.

(Genesis 8:1-5)

The wind God sent evaporated the waters and dried up the earth. Also the gushing water from the underground reservoirs stopped. Scientists believe this changed the topography of the earth: as the underground reservoirs emptied they may have collapsed into giant sinkholes, which formed the basins of our oceans today. And as the water receded into those basins it would have pushed other parts of earth up, forming new continents and new mountain ranges.

Verse 4 “in the 7th month on the 17th day of the month the Ark came to rest”. On the Jewish calendar this was the same month and day during the year that Jesus rose from the dead. He is our Ark, sent by God to save us from God’s judgment. And just as Noah eventually stepped out onto a clean earth, into a new life – that’s what Christ invites us to do.

It took 3 more months for the waters to recede enough to see other mountains! So the Ark had rested on the very highest mountain in that area. Today the highest mountain in the Ararat range is 17,000 feet! They were really up high! Ararat is somewhere in Armenia and you get there by going through Turkey.

So…if you thought Noah’s flood lasted 40 days and 40 nights – you’d have been wrong. It lasted more then a year – 371 days.

And now Noah was probably looking out from the windows that were right under the roof of the Ark – looking way way down – and don’t you think he had to be thinking, “now what?”

Change is scary and Noah was by no means young! He was 600 years old! But, he continued to wait on God and watch for what He would do. So after 40 more days he could finally see some land.