Guess what else survived the flood

 Read Genesis 8

We are going to talk some more about Noah and the flood, but we are going to have to talk about profanity before it’s all said and done.  Just warning you.

Let’s jump to 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.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, 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.

“As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

day and night

will never cease.”

What can we learn from this pericope?

Most people say that God promised not to judge the world again by a flood.  That doesn’t mean there won’t be flooding.  We see flooding all over the world, sometimes even in western Oklahoma.

It means that God will not destroy the world again by means of a flood.  There will be a time when this sinful world is consumed and a new heaven and new earth are bestowed upon us, but these things will not be manifest by a flood.

It tells us that the flood was not a natural event.  It was a judgment.  What would be natural?

Seedtime and harvest.

Cold and heat.

Summer and winter. In Oklahoma, those can be on the same day.

Day and night.

God said that as long as the earth endures—however long that may be.  Only God knows.  But as long as this earth endures, we will have the natural order of things as God set them in motion at the creation.

What else did we learn?

Noah made a burnt offering to the Lord.  The Lord was pleased.  Those animals that were considered clean, especially some of the birds, might not have been as excited about this, but Noah’s offering pleased God.

Anything else?

How about our sinful nature surviving the flood.  Noah was found blameless before the Lord, but that does not mean he didn’t have sinful nature.

His sons and their wives still had a sinful nature.

God stated that every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. What the…!

God just pronounced judgment upon the world because evil had become so commonplace.  Sin abounded like never before.  Noah was the only bright spot in a sinful world.

Why did God not purge that righteous remnant of evil and sin?

We are meant to struggle with God’s ways and the ways of the world.  God already chose us for salvation and right standing with him.

He wants us to choose him, his kingdom, and his righteousness over sin and evil.  God gives us the ability to choose him over our sinful nature.

We are meant to struggle.  We are meant to choose God.  We are meant to be overcomers, not for our salvation but to bring glory to God.

God did everything that righteousness required—and God defined righteousness and then abided in his decision—to make us right with him.  The blood of Jesus was the atoning sacrifice. Our profession of faith is the beginning of our salvation.

But every thought, action, lack of action, and everything else that we do while we still have breath is how we live out our salvation.

God judged the earth with a flood.  Only 8 people were preserved because Noah found favor with God, but our sinful nature survived as well.

We are meant to struggle with our nature and our own understanding but we were created to bring glory to God and to enjoy him very much.

What else survived the flood?  Our free will.  We are blessed to choose.  Sometimes we have those hold my beer moments where we wish God would have removed our free will and made us do the right thing, but we still have free will.

We still get to choose.

Sometimes we know what God wants us to do but we don’t want to do it.  The biblical term would be kicking against the goads, but God lets us choose anyway.

We should be singing Have thine Own Way, Lord! Have thine own way! Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.

Instead, we sing I did it my way.

You might think this is a dichotomy, but it doesn’t have to be. When we trust the Lord and his ways become our ways, then our own understanding is in accord with God’s directed steps.

Our sinful nature is an opportunity for us to say, I choose God’s ways as my own, before encountering the circumstances of the world.

What am I saying?  Before the problem or decision or set of circumstances arises, we have chosen God’s way and eliminated the dichotomy between trusting God and our own understanding.

I used this principle to teach others how to overcome profanity. The premise is that every word that we utter is a decision.

The counterargument is that when you hit your thumb with a hammer, there is no decision point between the stimulus and the response.

But there is, though it may be ever so brief.  So how do I or how do you make the decision not to use vulgar language?

We move the decision point. It no longer exists between the stimulus and response.  It comes well before anything requiring an immediate response.  You might call this training or discipleship.

With profanity, we change the lexicon.  We learn and use a new vocabulary.  We don’t use vulgarity. We practice the use of effective words.  We are filled with good words.

When the stimulus comes that might provoke vulgar speech, we don’t have the vulgar words to reach for, but we do have an abundance of other words.

Do you know the definition of vulgar? Usually, this is the first or second definition that we encounter when we go to the dictionary.  It’s characterized by ignorance.

How do you overcome ignorance?  Education and training. This is done before the decision as to what words to use are prompted by some event.

Think of sending soldiers into combat and not training them before they went.  They can just figure out how to shoot, move, and communicate once they get there and the enemy is trying to kill them.

That would be absurd, yet that is what we do so often when it comes to trusting God or leaning on our own understanding.  We have free will.  It survived the flood along with the sinful inclination of our hearts, but our free will lets us choose to choose God and his ways before the circumstances of the world are upon us.

When you take your car in for service, don’t you hope that the mechanics have been properly trained before you turn them loose with power tools on your vehicle?

Why then, do we wait for a moment of crisis to think about what to do when we could decide long before just to do everything God’s way.

Our sinful nature survived the flood.  Our free will survived the flood.  We should use our free will to choose God, his kingdom, and his righteousness if we want to lessen the struggle between trusting God and leaning on our own understanding.

If we want to please God, we need to make that decision now and start learning, understanding, and practicing his ways now.

And you thought we were going to talk about spending a year aboard a ship full of animals.

There’s still a rainbow coming.  Hang in there.

Amen.