Today we’re looking at what us golfers and those on Planet Shamrock might call God’s mulligan or do over. Of course he doesn’t need a mulligan, but when we look at how He created, then destroyed, then created again, it sure does look like even he thought He made a mistake. And where was he during the voyage on the Ark, and when they finally came to rest and the waters receded, and they sat on the Ark waiting? Surely these things must have been going through the minds of Noah’s family at the time.
But we have the luxury of seeing the whole story because of the Bible, and we know that God can’t make mistakes, and he is always there. This whole story is just one of the many throughout Scripture that emphasizes how merciful God really is and how He gives humanity so many chances to get it right, to keep starting over. All he has ever asked for is our allegiance.
It’s also about the war between Him and Satan. A war that God had already won from the beginning of time, but it shows the tactics Satan has used throughout history in an attempt to destroy people and prevent God’s ultimate plan of salvation. Satan may know his final destiny, but he’s not going down easy or alone.
So there they are sitting on the Ark going nowhere and:
I. God Remembers
Did God forget about Noah and his family? I know that’s how it sounds, but this word really means to consider, or even act upon. Kind of like when we say we remember a person’s birthday by throwing them a party. We already knew when the birthday was, we didn’t forget, but we are doing something to remember it by. So it really means God moved in the life of Noah and his family by picking up the wind so things would dry out faster.
This wind is the same word used for Spirit, and some want to infer that the same Spirit of God that hovered over the earth in Genesis 1 at creation is being referred to here. That’s not an impossible interpretation, but given the context, it’s more likely that it just mean wind here.
So this, “But God remembered” is a very important statement that we will hear again. It usually reflects a turning point in the history of God’s people, and a remembering of the covenant he has made with mankind. He’s about to take action for the welfare of His people.
God is always considering us and His covenant with us, and using this knowledge, he is constantly determining what is best for us. He never acts out of impulse, but when he goes into action, it’s always with His overall plan in mind.
How many times in your life, could you say that God remembered you? Have there been times in your life where you sure thought God had abandoned you, only to find that at the very right time, when you needed Him most, he seemed to remember you? Well:
II. Noah Waits for this remembrance
Notice that there was three months from the time the Ark came to rest on the mountains until the tops of the mountains were seen. Then after 40 more days Noah releases the raven, who eats dead carrion, so he has lots to eat out there and doesn’t come back. Then another two weeks as he keeps sending out the dove until it doesn’t come back, meaning there is now vegetation fully exposed.
Noah trusts that God will speak to him again. Finally on the 27th day of the second month God gave the orders to leave the Ark. Remember they got on a year earlier on the seventeenth day of the second month, for a grand total of 370 days. They didn’t have any 31 or 28 day months back then.
Noah not only waits in trust, but him and his family also resist what must have been great temptation to leave the Ark earlier. How tempting it must have been to get off that stinky boat as soon as they saw pieces of land. Honestly I think this is one of the most superhuman feats in the Bible. There are these eight people on this boat for a year, they can see the mountains emerging and no doubt each day more and more dry ground was showing. I would have been ripping pieces of wood off the Ark to make a raft and go find some land if I was them.
If that wasn’t enough, the dove doesn’t come back and they now know that the waters have subsided, Noah even looks out on New Years Day and sees that the face of the ground was dry, not even muddy, what a great way to celebrate New Years by getting off the boat. But no, 57 more days they stay on the Ark because God has not spoken yet. Those days must have seemed like forever. Like when we were driving back from BC for only three days.
Only God could have kept all eight of them sane through all of that, not even one of them bailed, come on! We start whining after a couple hours in a nice car, good thing there were no little kids on the Ark. Could you imagine how many “Are we there yets, can we get off now” there would have been.
When we are completely in the will of God, completely surrendered, God provides everything we need inside and outside, like we saw last week. That includes the fruit of the Spirit like patience, and peace.
Often we don’t think about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, but He’s been around from the beginning too, and it just confirms that God will always give us what we need when he asks us to do something. But we gotta keep listening.
Undoubtedly, God shows us greatly huge feats here as in so many other places in Scripture, to a point where it’s hard to believe sometimes. He does this to make the point that we have little to complain about and the little that God asks of us pales in comparison to what some of the Biblical figures tolerated. Jesus used hyperboles all the time to make His point, this is like an Old Testament hyperbole that many of us never really considered before because we’re so focused on the story of the Ark and the flood. We don’t necessarily consider that the patience and obedience of these people is truly supernatural. Not the power of the people, but the power of God. None of it happens without Him.
III. Noah Worships (Don’t say this)
So what does Noah do when he gets off the boat? Well, I think I would be cursing, saying it’s about time, how could you put us through this, and now what do you want us to do? But Noah, what does he do, what is the very first thing he does? He worships the Lord. He continues in patient obedience and builds an alter to make a sacrifice as commanded.
We know he didn’t do it begrudgingly either because God accepted it. He wouldn’t accept an offering that wasn’t from the heart. Ask yourself if that would be your mindset. You stuck us on a boat for a year with no sunshine and a bunch of smelly animals, you wiped out everything on earth including many of our friends, you haven’t given us a clue what to do next, hey lets worship.
But we can worship even if we don’t know where our life is leading, no matter what circumstances have occurred, if we are completely in oneness with God. He knows what he’s doing, he will guide us in our next step even if he only shows us the next hour. Have you ever been in that situation? Where you don’t have a clue what to do, but this small voice inside you keeps giving you the next little step? You just keep trusting?
Sometimes when times are tough, we get stuck in asking for things in our prayers and often it seems like there is no answer. I want to suggest to you that when it feels like this, go to the default like Noah does, like David often does in the Psalms, praise God. Worship Him. Let your prayers be full of praises for who He is, gratitude for what he has done, surrender for what He will do, even if it is not a direct answer to your prayers.
I think God gives us opportunities like that to help us build our trust in Him. I used to go hiking and camping a lot by myself in the wilderness (not a good idea I know). But I remember getting lost once, and this was before I was even a Christian. I had literally no idea how to get back, and I knew that they say to stay where you are, but nobody knew where I was, so I needed to get out myself.
I remember sitting down and crying, and basically giving up, and it was at that point, where I started to feel peaceful instead of anxious. So I got up and started walking again, and I don’t even remember thinking, just walking. But what I do remember is that certain things in the scenery began to stand out, some even seemed to be almost glowing, a certain bush or rock would just catch my attention.
And there was a certain sense of confidence about following these markers. Anyway, I just kept walking and moving toward these markers, until eventually I stumbled onto a dirt logging road which I followed down the mountain and it spit me out right beside the parking lot. I had no idea this road existed and it was probably only about three hundred yards from where I gave up. Sometimes God just wants us to give up, and let Him.
Now I didn’t necessarily worship when I got to the parking lot, but I sure celebrated, and knew that something was going on to help me get out of there. I believe Noah was probably in a similar situation where he likely wanted to follow his thoughts, his desires, but something inside Him knew that doing that would lead to problems. But he seemed to know that waiting for instructions from the Lord, who sent him on this trip in the first place, and had so far been faithful, was the best course of action. Waiting is definitely a type of surrender. Whether waiting in a bank line, or waiting for a loved one to pass away, or waiting for God to answer a prayer.
But God didn’t say what to do when they got off the boat, He did say before they even loaded, before the flood, that Noah needed to bring some clean animals for sacrifice. So Noah being fairly intelligent basically followed what he figured was God’s next known desire, or at least when in doubt about what to do next, you can’t go wrong by worshipping the Lord.
In following God’s will, it’s always good to remember the last thing you know God instructed you to do, and ask yourself if that is complete. Because he usually won’t reveal a next step until the previous one is accomplished.
Now after smelling Noah’s offering:
IV. God makes His Promises
Listen to this because it’s truly amazing. After all this, after wiping out nearly everything from the face of the earth because of his anger toward sinful humanity, and because of one man’s obedience and willingness to follow Him completely, God says in his heart (he doesn’t say this to Noah yet, so how does the writer know he said this? It has to be inspired by the Holy Spirit).
God says in His heart, “I accept your worship, this sacrifice of blood pleases me and I will never again curse the ground because of man, I will never strike down every living creature again, and as long as the earth exists there will be seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night.”
This promise has been kept. In the Old Testament these kinds of atoning blood sacrifices had to be performed by the priests at least once a year. But for us the great news is that the blood sacrifice of God’s perfect son Jesus, has given us complete atonement once and for all. The only sacrifice he asks of us now is our faith, our lives while we live them.
God says the natural rhythms of the earth will never cease. But here’s what I find to be most amazing. Nothing about humanity has changed, just like when Christ died. The human race didn’t instantly become good. This is all about what God is doing not what man is doing.
Yes Noah was used by God, but Noah himself is not responsible for any of this beyond his obedience to God. The Bible is not about people and what they do, but about what God does, sometimes using people. None of the “heroes” of the Bible did anything that any normal Christian couldn’t do. It was all God.
God still says the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. God knew people were still the same, so why go through this great calamity knowing that he was still going to have to deal with people sinning against Him in the future. Why didn’t he just wipe everybody out and start over with a new Adam and Eve who are not capable of sinning?
But God says to Himself, “I know how these people are, after all I created them, but because of this Noah guy’s obedience, I am not going to do this again, I have a different plan, and have had it since the beginning.”
You know what I think, and this isn’t based on strong theological grounds or anything, but I think the reason he has kept this whole thing going, is not for humanity to suffer, or to show that we can be good, but to toy with Satan. He let’s Satan think he is getting the upper hand, that he controls people and the world, but every time God wins. He is making Satan’s life a living hell long before he gets thrown in the eternal fire.
God wants our love by choice. Think about it, nothing can exist without the opposite, we can’t know hot without cold, dark without light, rich without poor, good without evil, and love without hate. So God says, your love is meaningless unless there is an alternative, so I am going to allow the alternative to be in the world, and see what my loved ones do.
I love them so much, I am going to let them go and see if they come back. I’m going to bless them by giving them everything they want including choosing their own way without me. After all isn’t that what we all do when our kids grow up. We have to let them go, we hope we’ve provided them with everything they need to be happy and good people, but we have no control over what they are going to do with it, we can’t stop them from choosing something other than what we want for them.
Let me share a story from Max Lucado:
God has provided us with everything we need for a life of eternity with Him. If we mess our lives up, we can never say its God’s fault like so many people do with their own parents. At some point in everyone’s life we have to decide if we are going to live mindlessly, and powerlessly based on the past, the action of others, or take ownership of our own lives and live how we choose.
The all mighty God is in essence begging, “I desperately hope you choose me, but I will never force you, that isn’t love, that’s coercion.” God’s love is sacrificial, He kills his son for us and he still let’s us have our own way, risking it all to see if we come back to Him. He is like the Father who gives us everything, we take it and leave, following our own desires. He sits by the window everyday never knowing if he will see us again. When you think of it that way, don’t you just want to give Him the joy of you coming home, saying thank you?
It hurts him to be without us, way more than it hurts us to be without him. Do you understand that? He’s not asking for us to pay anything back, he just wants to be with His kids. That’s what he’s offering, all he gets is us, we get everything, and we have the gall to refuse Him that. How many of us had father’s who made demands in order for us to get his love, approval or blessing. God is not that kind of Father, he just wants to have us on his lap.
He wants to give us everything. The keys to the Kingdom, eternal life free from sorrow, from hard work, from difficulty, from sickness. He could easily make us obey, and choose him, but He doesn’t. He simply calls us.
So yes maybe we suffer a little because of the game God is playing with Satan, but it’s only truly suffering if we are not living with God, if we don’t believe he is in charge of everything, if we don’t have a real relationship with Him, and you know what, if we are living for and with God, he said we’re going to suffer in this life, but not forever, and He has overcome the world. So if we are in Him, so have we. Noah overcame the world’s destruction, by choosing to be in the Ark. We can overcome suffering and death, by being in Jesus.
So what’s it gonna be? A year on the Ark, or eternity wishing you had.
It’s very simple, God doesn’t need mulligans, but he generously gives them. Do you need one? Is it time for a new beginning for you? A do over? We don’t know how many holes are left to play in our golf course of life. Get on the Ark if you haven’t already. If you have, how are you living on the Ark? Are you a pleasing aroma, a living sacrifice? You still can be. His heart is pleased simply by you saying yes.
This week all I would ask you to do is think about and ask God where you might need a mulligan in your life. God is waiting to give you one.
