Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church - Marshfield, WI

Creation Redeemed - Genesis 7

Genesis 7

Genesis 7, while describing how the flood came and took away everything upon the face of the earth, is also about how God is cleansing and starting over.  This is how God will fix the world.  It starts by destroying in order that God can build again.
 
God plants the seeds for this new world with Noah, his family, and the animals who are on the ark.  This is the path for how God will redeem his creation and save it from evil.  God protects the remnant of the Creation to start over.

Noah and his family build the ark, which is also the same word that will be used of Moses when he is put into the basket by his mother to save him from Pharaoh.
 
As Noah and his family and the rest of the creation is put into the ark, God sends the promised deluge.  This is not just a gentle rain for 40 days and nights.  This is a maelstrom, the kind of weather you do not want to find yourself outside in as trees fall and houses are blown away.

And not just the rain from above as well, but we are told that the geysers in the deep burst forth.  This is like Yellowstone going off and Ol’ Faithful ripping up cracks in the earth.

Everything is lost.  Except for those who are in the ark.   They are preserved by God.  They are saved through the water.  This image of Noah and his family becomes Peter’s way of talking about Baptism.  This is how you also are brought through the wrath that is to come.  The ark that is Christ’s Church, his beloved bride.
 
As the ark was carried up and protected, so too are Christ’s people.  Guaranteed not because of their own works, but because of God’s desire to save.  God made a choice and so he does with you too in Jesus Christ, who is your ark from God and has carried you through the flood by the washing away of your sins.

This is how God will remake and restore all that he has made.  “If anyone is in Christ, the old is gone and behold, the new has come.”
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