We are bird watching this week on the Bible for Busy People, looking to see what God says about birds in his Word. Turns out he has a lot to say about these creatures. Well, I hope you brought your Dramamine because we’re getting ready to get on a boat, the most famous boat in history… Noah’s Ark.
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Transcription:
We are bird watching this week on the Bible for Busy People looking to see what God says about birds in his Word. Turns out he has a lot to say about these creatures. Well, I hope you brought your Dramamine because we’re getting ready to get on a boat, the most famous boat in history, arguably. Noah’s Ark. Now, I’d love to dive into this entire story with you, but this is the Bible for Busy People. I’m hoping that you and I can spend a whole week with Noah and his family and the animals this summer. But for today, let me give you a brief overview before we begin. We learn in Genesis chapter six that the Lord was observing so much evil in the people he created, that he was sorry that he created them and he decided to destroy the world with floodwaters. But God found favor with Noah. It says he walked in close fellowship with God. That’s how I want to walk with God. And so, he instructed Noah to build an Ark and to take his family on it, his wife, their three sons, and their wives, and two of every animal. Time went on and people thought Noah was crazy, but he built that Ark and one day it started to rain. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and only Noah and his family and the animals on the Ark were saved. Flood waters covered the earth for 150 days, and here is where we pick up the story in Genesis chapter eight, verse one.
But God remembered Noah,
Remember those words, pitch a tent there because they’re so important.
and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the Ark, and he sent a wind over the earth and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the 150 days, the water had gone down, and on the 17th day of the seventh month, the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the 10th month and on the first day of the 10th month, the tops of the mountains became visible.
I mean, at this point I’d be like looking for my land legs. How about you? Okay, let’s go bird watching again together. Verse six now.
After 40 days, Noah opened a window he had made in the Ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth. So it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf. Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.
Quick note here, what is the olive branch, the olive leaf? A sign of peace, and it makes me think of Psalm 34, verse 14,
Turn away from evil and do good.
Search for peace and work to maintain it. That dove searched and searched on a mission from Noah, and he found the olive branch. And it’s a picture to me of you and I searching for peace. Pursuing peace. I want to be a peace pursuer. All right, we’re going to pick up our story now in verse 12, Genesis chapter eight.
He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again. But this time it did not return to him. By the first day of the first month of Noah’s 601st year,
Yeah, people lived a long time back then.
the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the 27th day of the second month, the earth was completely dry. Then God said to Noah, come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives, bring out every kind of living creature that is with you. The birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it. So Noah, his wife and his sons and their wives left the boat and all of the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat pear by pair. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and there he sacrificed as burnt offerings, the animals and birds that had been approved for that purpose. And the Lord was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice, and said to himself, I will never again curse the ground because of the human race. Even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood, I will never again destroy all living things as long as the earth remains. There will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.
And that’s why God gave us the rainbow, a symbol of his promise to never flood the earth again. Isn’t that incredible? Well, people were evil back then. People are evil now. Our hearts are deceitful and beyond cure, the Bible says, But that’s why Jesus came. And I want to conclude today’s episode with his words in the gospel of Matthew chapter 10, beginning in verse 29,
What is the price of two sparrows? One copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid. You are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.
Now, you may be wondering, why did people buy sparrows? Well, people who sacrificed animals to God so that he would forgive their sins, often sacrificed lambs or goats, but some couldn’t afford those animals, and so they purchased sparrows. They were simply cheap. And yet Jesus tells us that God is concerned about them. All of this, of course, is a foreshadowing of the cross. Jesus came to do something about the evil in our hearts. To be the lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. Yours and mine, and everyone’s. And he is the same God who is saying, I care about the sparrows. I remember the sparrows when they fall to the ground, and just as he remembered Noah and his family on that ark, he remembers you. He counts the hairs on your head. That is how precious you are to God. Yeah, you are really loved.
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