Noah and the flood

Introduction

If you ask around what the best-known stories in the Bible are, the story of Noah's ark often appears in the top five.

That is quite astonishing. Why is this particular story from the Bible so well known?

This motif of a saving ark is also used from time to time in feature films, which made me think of the film "2012" by Roland Emmerich. Some of you may have seen the film. On 21 or 23 December 2012, the world was supposed to end due to an incorrect interpretation of a historical Mayan calendar and various film directors have created doomsday scenarios, including Roland Emmerich with the blockbuster "2012".

And at the end of this film, the surviving people and animals are saved in three huge arks that sail away on the flooded earth towards the end. It's a motif that everyone understands.

NASA named this film the most absurd science fiction film and even put a web page online with corrections because the film apparently scared a lot of people.

Most people don't go to the cinema because they want to be intellectually challenged, but because they want to see bombastic images. And that's what films like this are good for, of course. "Independence Day" had similar qualities from the same director.

But let's get back to the original. What does Noah and the ark mean for us today?

Incidentally, the word "ark" literally means "box", so the ark was a large buoyant box.

Some people may think this story is a fairy tale about a flooded world, and many people cannot accept the old age of the first people described in the Bible.

Personally, I believe that what is written there is true, but in order to learn from this story, it is not necessary to accept everything literally. However, we must engage with this story.

Noah

Let's start with Noah (Genesis 6:9; NT):

We find three attributes here:

• righteous
• Nothing reprehensible was found in him.
• He lived steadfastly with God.

righteous

When I thought about it, I thought of the opposite, which you sometimes see in films. They try to construct strange entanglements that are created by one person lying. I find that kind of thing hard to stomach, especially when the lie isn't even necessary, if you can even say the word "lie" and "necessary" in the same sentence.

I find honest and righteous people like Noah very impressive.

The second attribute goes one better:

Nothing reprehensible

Other translations write here "upright", "blameless" and one translation writes here "faultless", which is also a possible meaning of the Hebrew word.

Nobody is "faultless", that's probably how everyone sees it and I actually see it too.

Even people who live exemplary lives have and make mistakes. Many years ago, I had the honour of meeting Sister Helene from Cologne, a deaconess who dedicated her life to the homeless, young people who were difficult to educate and other people on the margins of society. And she was really nice. She also came to a Bible study here at the church once.

I said to her at the time that I was totally impressed by her and she replied: "If you only knew where I stand on repentance..." This is a somewhat old-fashioned expression and means that she regularly prayed to God and asked for forgiveness for her mistakes towards other people, perhaps for hurtful words, etc. and that she wanted to be changed.

If even a person who lives so much for others can never be flawless, how can Noah be flawless here?

I think that Noah was a special person. He was a role model for Jesus Christ. His life was impeccable, just as Jesus' life was. And it was only through him that we could enter the ark and thus be saved, just as we can only be saved through Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12).

And Noah is called a preacher of righteousness in 2 Peter 2:5, which is also comparable to Jesus.

We generally find many references, forerunners in the Old Testament that point to Jesus Christ, and thus the Old Testament often serves to illustrate the truth of the New Testament. And that is why it is also important to engage with the story, even if it is perhaps difficult to accept that it really happened in every detail.

And the third attribute:

Consistent with God

In the Bible, righteous living is actually always linked to a connection with God. There are no righteous deniers of God in the Bible.

This is of course challenging, especially because it is unfortunately not uncommon for people to say that they walk with God, but do not behave righteously.

Some people think of the various abuse scandals in churches and church organisations.

I think I once read that, statistically speaking, abuse in the church does not occur more frequently than with other people, but due to the church's own claim, which is based on the Bible, and the particularly serious abuse of trust by the perpetrators, this is of a different calibre. And of course it is also a case for the public prosecutor's office.

But we don't need to take the issue so seriously. We've probably all thought to ourselves at some point that a certain person may not be a Christian, but is behaving much better than many Christians. How does this fit in with the link between righteousness and closeness to God in the Bible?

I believe that the right way to deal with this topic is to look at yourself. I am not flawless and want to bring my mistakes to God, I want to apologise to people I have hurt in some way and I want to be changed by God so that I make fewer and fewer mistakes and hurt other people. And, like Noah, I want to walk with God more and more consistently.

And then hopefully the righteousness described in the Bible will grow.

The state of the world

But let's read on and come to another difficult statement:

I said at the beginning that the story of Noah's ark is fairly well known, but it would also be interesting to know whether the cause of the flood is also known.

"Departed from the right path" can also be translated quite banal with "they act wickedly", "completely corrupt" with "full of crime and the earth was full of violence. Violence seemed to be a particular problem. It is not the lie or the deceit that is emphasised, but the violence.

We normally think in terms of "perpetrator" and "victim" and in our constitutional state it should be the case that the perpetrator is convicted and imprisoned so that, on the one hand, there is a certain deterrent and, on the other, the perpetrator does some soul-searching and, as part of a process of re-socialisation, refrains from such acts in future. And potential victims should be protected from the offender.

I don't know how well that works, but there are certainly many countries in the world where things are worse than here.

How does our perception fit in with the judgement from the Bible text: "All people act wickedly"?

You can generalise this question: Is man essentially good and becomes evil through circumstances or does man carry wickedness within him from the beginning?

You could have a fundamental discussion here, and as a young person I never avoided such discussions. The Bible says quite clearly that man is essentially evil and must learn to do good. Natural empathy, which is present to a certain extent, is not enough

Children also need to be brought up lovingly, because without love and education it will be difficult for them.

This all still sounds logical to me today, but I don't really want to have these discussions any more. I would much rather walk with God and, with God's help, reduce the wickedness that I sometimes feel within me.

And although the statement that people are evil at heart seems plausible to me, I don't want to distrust other people across the board. That sounds kind of illogical, but if the judgement about people in general is correct, then I too am evil at heart, but hopefully I have learned good behaviour and can also be nice. And then others can be nice too, they are often even nicer than me.

The flood

But what about the flood? Why should all humans and animals be destroyed?

Of course, that makes me reluctant.

It is certainly not appropriate to judge God here. God created man and can also destroy him again.

That sounds kind of logical to me, but the question remains as to why?

I can't really explain it, but there is one thought I take away from this passage.

After the flood, God says in Genesis 8:21.22; NT:

It is a fallacy to believe that all you have to do is destroy all the bad people and then the good people will remain and the earth will be peaceful.

That's exactly what God tried back then with the flood and it didn't work.

That means solutions like "all politicians in prison" don't work because the next politicians will be the same.

You often see this in revolutions. The next rulers are often like in Animal Farm. Or "the revolution eats its children" is another pithy phrase.

So you can't get rid of violence through violence.

At least that's what we can learn from this flood episode.

God's covenant

And then God promises us another covenant.

This promise is described in a little more detail (Genesis 9: 13-17; NT):

The bow, of course, refers to the rainbow.

This covenant is of course a forerunner of the new covenant that we can have with Jesus Christ today. We know this from the Lord's Supper, where Jesus is quoted (Matthew 26:28; New Testament):

The rainbow is a sign of the covenant with God that he will no longer destroy life, and is therefore a symbol of life.

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). So here again we have a parallel to the New Testament.

Summary

Let me summarise:

• We first looked at the nature of Noah
. He was
• righteous
• . There was nothing reprehensible about him.
• He lived consistently with God.
And
through him we could be saved. He was a role model for Jesus Christ.
• Then we looked at the question of whether people are essentially evil or good.
And according to the Bible, they are evil and must learn to act well.
• Then came a thought about the flood: you can't eliminate violence through violence.
• There are no easy solutions.
• Finally, we thought about the covenant that God
will
• no
longer send
• a flood
. This covenant is a forerunner of the new covenant that Jesus Christ wants to enter into with each of us personally.