1. "The simplest of questions have different answers depending on what you know. If all you know is elementary science, that you'll answer why questions like they're how questions, and the first answer may be your only answer."

2. "You need to know what your life is for and what your purpose is. You could just ask your parents. You could ask your employer. You could ask your friends. Or you could ask someone who uses you for their purposes. You could ask a stranger or a brilliant person that you've never met. But according to the Bible, you need to know the truth about God from the God who made this world."

3. "Friend, the God who remembered Noah will remember you. As Paul said to the Philippians, he who began a good Work in you will bring it to completion."

4. "As dark as some of God's deliverances may sometimes be to us at the time, they're not the same as the destruction that would come upon our souls if God were to have left us in our sin, to fall utterly under his good and right judgment and wrath."

5. "Waiting is not passive. Waiting like this is active. And here Noah waits in verse 10 and in verse 12, as the waters subside from the earth. This was a man who had spent years, maybe decades building the ark."

6. "Faith shows itself in the path we choose to walk. No, neither you nor I walk it perfectly, but we will walk it really. And thus you will see again and again in a true follower of Jesus, what we go and what we do."

7. "The more you come to know God, the more you come to understand yourself. On the other hand, the more you come to see what's going on in you, the more you're pushed to understand God and to see what he's like."

8. "Step after step, we follow his instructions. Step after step, we then get experiences of his faithfulness renewed every day as he provides for us."

9. "My non-Christian friend, I promise that your life is not so far off from God that it is beyond his ability to save you. There's no one who sits in a Christian church who deserves to be there on their own. We're here only because of what God has done in Christ."

10. "What ark are you in? What flood have you endured? What captivity do you find yourself in today? Don't despair. Trust God's good will. Trust his powerful ways be directed by his true word."

Observation Questions

1. In Genesis 8:1, what specific action does God take regarding Noah, and what else is included in God's remembrance?

2. Looking at Genesis 8:1b-3, what three specific actions did God take to make the waters recede?

3. From Genesis 8:6-12, what sequence of events took place as Noah sought to determine if the earth was dry?

4. In Genesis 8:15-17, what specific instructions does God give Noah about leaving the ark?

5. According to Genesis 8:13-14, how much time passed between when Noah first saw dry ground and when God told him to leave the ark?

6. In Genesis 8:17, what echoes of the original creation mandate do we hear in God's instructions to Noah?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that God "remembered" Noah, and what does this divine remembrance tell us about God's character?

2. How does Noah's experience of waiting in the ark demonstrate the relationship between faith and patience?

3. What does God's control over the waters in this passage reveal about His sovereignty over creation?

4. How does Noah's reliance on God's word for both entering and exiting the ark demonstrate the importance of divine guidance?

5. Why might God have waited until the ground was completely dry before telling Noah to leave the ark, even though Noah could see dry ground earlier?

Application Questions

1. When was the last time you felt forgotten by God, and how does God's remembrance of Noah encourage you in that situation?

2. What are you currently waiting for in your life, and how can Noah's example of active waiting strengthen your faith?

3. Think about a time when you had to trust God's timing rather than your own judgment. What did you learn from that experience?

4. In what specific area of your life do you need to practice patient obedience to God's word, even when you don't fully understand His timing?

5. How has studying Scripture helped you better understand yourself? What specific passage has recently given you insight into your own heart?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Psalm 40:1-3 - A passage about patient waiting on the Lord that echoes Noah's experience of deliverance from the waters.

2. Isaiah 49:14-16 - God's response to those who feel forgotten, reinforcing the truth that God remembers His people.

3. James 1:2-4 - Teaching about how waiting and trials produce steadfastness, illuminating why God sometimes has us wait.

4. 2 Peter 3:3-9 - Explains God's timing from an eternal perspective, helping us understand why His deliverance may seem delayed.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Analogy of the Kettle Boiling and the Flood’s Purpose

II. God’s Will to Deliver His People (Genesis 8:1)

III. God’s Way to Deliver His People (Genesis 8:1b-14)

IV. God’s Word to Deliver His People (Genesis 8:15-19)

V. The Legacy of Faith: From Noah to St. Patrick

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Detailed Sermon Outline

I. The Analogy of the Kettle Boiling and the Flood’s Purpose

• A. Answering “Why” vs. “How”

• 1. The kettle’s boiling illustrates differing perspectives on purpose.

  • A scientific explanation answers “how,” but love explains “why.”

• 2. The Flood’s judgment and mercy reflect God’s dual purpose.

  • The Flood answers “how” judgment occurred, but God’s character answers “why” (Genesis 6-8).

• B. Relating to Life’s Trials

• 1. Knowing God’s character is vital amid suffering.

  • “You need to know what your life is for and what your purpose is.”

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II. God’s Will to Deliver His People (Genesis 8:1)

• A. “God Remembered Noah”

• 1. Divine remembrance signifies covenantal faithfulness.

  • God’s “remembering” reflects His mercy, not forgetfulness (Luke 12:6-7).

• 2. The Ark as a symbol of preservation.

  • The Lord “shut him in” (Genesis 7:16), emphasizing God’s initiative.

• B. Encouragement for Believers

• 1. God’s remembrance extends to His people today.

  • “The God who remembered Noah will remember you.”

• 2. Assurance in Christ’s finished work.

  • Hebrews 10:14: “By a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”

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III. God’s Way to Deliver His People (Genesis 8:1b-14)

• A. Sovereign Power Over Creation

• 1. God controls natural forces.

  • Winds subside the waters (Genesis 8:1b), echoing the Red Sea miracle (Exodus 14:21).

• 2. Timely deliverance through patient waiting.

  • Noah’s 150-day wait demonstrates active faith.

• B. Noah’s Faith in Action

• 1. Sending the raven and dove (Genesis 8:6-12).

  • The dove’s return with an olive leaf signals hope (Genesis 8:11).

• 2. Trusting God’s timing despite uncertainty.

  • “Waiting is not passive… it takes real faith to wait.”

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IV. God’s Word to Deliver His People (Genesis 8:15-19)

• A. Obedience to Divine Command

• 1. God’s instruction to “go out” (Genesis 8:15-17).

  • Echoes creation’s mandate to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:22).

• 2. Noah as a model of responsive faith.

  • “Faith shows itself in the path we choose to walk.”

• B. The Necessity of Scripture

• 1. God’s Word reveals His will.

  • “We would not know God’s will if He didn’t speak to us.”

• 2. Studying Scripture for maturity.

  • Calvin’s Institutes: True wisdom begins with knowing God and self.

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V. The Legacy of Faith: From Noah to St. Patrick

• A. St. Patrick’s Testimony

• 1. Captivity and conversion.

  • Patrick’s enslavement led to his spiritual awakening.

• 2. Missionary courage in pagan Ireland.

  • “He could not be silent” about God’s blessings (Patrick’s Confession).

• B. Application for Modern Believers

• 1. Trusting God’s mercy and power in trials.

  • “What ark are you in? What flood have you endured?”

• 2. Responding to God’s Word with obedience.

  • “Step after step, we follow His instructions.”

• C. Closing Exhortation

• 1. Call to repentance and faith.

  • “Today could be the day God remembers you.”

• 2. Assurance of God’s faithfulness.

  • “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion” (Philippians 1:6).

Why did the kettle boil?

Well, it's a simple question. The kettle boiled because the water in it became heated as the metal of the container was heated by the coils of the electric range it sat on. The molecules of the water didn't chemically change. In their components of their element. But the physical properties, these particular H2O molecules changed as the energy and the heat increased and so caused the temperature to rise.

As they become energized and so expand and spread out enough to change from form of a liquid state to a gaseous vapor. So we see bubbles begin to form more and more of them as the heat goes up. And as the vapor The pressure of the liquid is equal to the atmospheric pressure in the air above the water. The point of transition from liquid to gas is called boiling.

Why did the kettle boil? Because Emily loves tea and Ryan loves Emily.

He wanted to express his love, even in this small way. Because he knew that she would enjoy it and appreciate his thoughtfulness.

The simplest of questions have different answers depending on what you know. If all you know is elementary science, you'll answer why questions like they're how questions. And the first answer may be your only answer.

But if you know Ryan and Emily, you may be able to help explain the bigger picture, the motives and purposes of an action, even if you don't understand the science behind it all.

In the big questions of life, too, we often find only how answers to why questions. Our passage today reveals some fundamental truths about who God is, and questions are raised that are starkly evident in the unique circumstance of the world submerged with water because of God's wrath. Why did this ancient world that we've been studying in this series, why did this ancient world perish? Well, because unprecedented amount of water came upon it, day after day and week after week, it flooded. Yeah?

But that's really to answer the question how. Why is better answered by referring to the intelligent actor, God, and His purposes in so acting. He acted in judgment and He acted in mercy. We thought last time about His judgment poured out in the flood. But if you only focus on the first half of the story, you'll get a true, but a partial answer of what God is like.

Good, holy, omniscient, yes, certainly true. But if you're here today and you're experiencing trouble in your life, you need to know more than merely about God's judgment of sin. And sinners in the flood. You have to pull the camera back, as it were, and you have to ask what God was doing and what he is doing. You need to know what your life is for and what your purpose is.

You could just ask your parents, you could ask your employer, you could ask your friends, or you could ask someone who uses you for their purposes. You could ask a stranger or a brilliant person that you've never met. But according to the Bible, you need to know the truth about God from the God who made this world. You need to know the truth about what He is doing. You need to know that He's all powerful and that it matters what you do.

As well. Three things as we approach our passage. Genesis chapter 8, verses 1 to 9. Genesis chapter 8, verses 1 to 9. You can find it on page 6 in the Bibles provided.

In verse 1 we see that God is merciful. We see God's will to deliver His people, God's will to deliver His people. And then at the end of verse 1 through verse 14, we see that God is all powerful. We see God's way to deliver His people. And then verses 15 to 19, we see that God is our Lord.

We see God's Word comes to deliver His people. And then all this, Noah representing all of us, should respond in faith and obedience. So we see God's will. There in verse 1, God's way from the end of verse 1 to verse 14, and God's Word coming in verses 15 to 19. And I pray that as we study this passage, you'll come to understand more of your own life and more of what the God who made you is like.

So listen now to this account about Noah and realize that the most important thing to learn is not what you find out about Noah. But what you found out about God.

Genesis chapter 8, beginning verse 1.

But God remembered Noah and all the beasts, all the livestock that were with him in the ark.

And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed. The rain from the heavens was restrained. And the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated.

And in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month. And the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

At the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. But the dove found no place to set her foot. And she returned to him in the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth.

So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark and the dove came back to him in the evening and behold in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove and she did not return to him anymore. In the 601st year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth.

And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out.

Then God said to Noah, 'Go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird, everything that moves on the earth. Went out by families from the ark.

First things we want to notice is God's will, His choice to be merciful. Look again at verse 1, But God remembered Noah. And all the beasts and all the livestock that were with them in the ark. So Noah and his family and all these animals had been shut up together in the ark for what must have been an eternity. At least that's how it seemed.

I've had more communication from you all this week about what that was like than anything else in this passage. People are letting speculation run wild about what it would have been like to have been for a year in this dark, stinky, loud place with tremendous sounds coming from outside. We read here that God remembered Noah, not because God's memory had temporarily hidden Noah from God's attention, but simply because this is the human-like way that Scripture normally speaks of God. God is described as He would be if we were a human and He had done something.

Like this. After a period of Noah simply being preserved in the flood, all of a sudden the weather outside changes. And it's this change that's represented here in these words, God remembered Noah. Noah had not been buried forever in this closed, floating coffin, but God had finished His watery work of judging the world that He had made. And this remembering is a remembering in mercy.

We have to remember that Noah is in the middle of the terrible scene that we considered last time. Last week I had the joy of visiting Ian Murray, almost 93-year-old founder of the Banner of Truth Trust. He is in past days been a frequent visitor here, spoken here at our church.

When we were talking with him, at one point he recounted his father, how he had as a young man been much involved in the shipping trade and the merchant marines down in Cove, Ireland. Well, on May 7, 1915, a German submarine's torpedo struck and sank the Lusitania just off the coast there, killing almost 1,200 people. And Ian told us that his father because he had spent so much time among the merchant marine and dock workers there in Cove, including on the crew of the Lusitania, had the duty of going down to the mortuary and identifying bodies of those who had lost their lives in that terrible accident. An even more massive taking of human life had just gone on in Noah's day. As God acted in judgment by sending the waters of the flood.

He, being good, would no longer endure the evil done by each person, each sin, by a divine, image-bearing creature presenting his own kind of blasphemy and misrepresentation of the good Creator. Finally, enough was enough, and so God acted. God had warned the people for years through Noah. All of Noah's hearers could have repented. Perhaps all of Noah's hearers could have gotten on the ark.

It was a huge thing. The door was open for a long time, but none did. They mocked, they ignored him. All was met with scoffing and violence and evil continually, as we read back in chapter 6. Even Noah's deliverance had seemed somewhat grim, a great wooden container filled with representatives of all the land animals and birds collected together.

No doubt supernaturally, along with Noah and his family. There were no openings in the ark because of the deluge of water that it was to endure. They had all gone in, including Noah and all his family. You look back in chapter 7, verse 16, the Lord shut him in. This was protection and preservation.

Or was this punishment? As the waters poured down for 40 days and 40 nights, the ark was lifted from off the earth, buoyed by the rising waters. Imagine beyond the experience of darkness and smell, the unnerving unnaturalness of it all, constantly surrounded by these terrifying creatures and the most horrific noises from outside immediately, perhaps, of men and animals dying. But then ultimately just of the storm itself, the violence of the wind and the waves.

So Noah endured all of that. The smell, the darkness, the terrible storm, all from inside a box with no windows that he could see out of. Finally, the center point of this whole flood narrative here in Genesis is chapter 8, verse 1. That's the very center of it. The story comes, but God remembered Noah.

The concern that they were forgotten, that their own demise was only delayed after five months of the storm, and who knows what would happen to them then, as the ark floated on the watery globe, with them encased in this wooden darkness. Then we see that God remembered Noah and all the people and the animals who were on the ark, and he changed the weather to bring tremendous winds to blow back the waters. Now, if you just think about that picture, the original hearers of this, if it were read, the original readers of Moses would have had something in mind when they read about this wind blowing back the waters. What would that be? It would be the Red Sea.

When they had seen the Red Sea parted by the winds, the great volume of water pushed back and kept back steadily as the children of Israel crossed. And then at just the right time, when the children of Israel were across and Pharaoh's army came in afterwards, the restraining winds were pulled back and all of a sudden the waters flooded in.

All of these images would be in their minds vividly as they're experiencing their own version of this reading of this ancient flood that had occurred.

And he had watched the children of Israel, Moses had, and so he now realizes that as they are poised on the banks of the Jordan about to go over into Canaan, he now is reminding them of God's remembering his people. So my brothers and sisters, whatever you've been going through, you can know that God does not forget his own. However much you may have been feeling by your circumstances that surely God has forgotten me, the way my prayers have not been answered, the way my spirits feel discouraged, the way the circumstances turn against me year after year, decade after decade, surely I am one of those whom God has forgotten. But friend, look at this account here. The fact that God includes even the animals shows the extent of His care and concern.

That should encourage you. Do you remember what Jesus says in Luke 12? Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies, and not one of them is forgotten before God? Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, you are of more value than many sparrows.

Friend, the God who remembered Noah will remember you too.

As Paul said to the Philippians, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. I was sharing with the new members class on Friday night that thing the writer to the Hebrews assures us of in Hebrews 10:14 when he writes, By a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Perhaps you're someone here today who's painfully aware of your own sin, your own incomplete sanctification. But friend, if you're trusting in Christ, you are still an object of His mercy. You are the object of the Holy Spirit's convicting and convincing and maturing work, and that work continues among all who are justified, and we will be finally brought to that state of perfect sinlessness.

That's the great hope that we have this morning, not to be led to despair by the remaining sin, but to notice the beginning work of the Holy Spirit that He's been doing, and to see that work as a down payment, as it were, as a promise of the completed work to come.

As dark as some of God's deliverances may sometimes be to us at the time, They're not the same as the destruction that would come upon our souls if God were to have left us in our sin, to fall utterly under His good and right judgment and wrath. Friends, this church is not a fellowship of the perfectly sanctified. We have a prayer of confession by Sam because Sam, along with all of us, sees that we have sins, that there are problems that we see in ourselves and in each other.

Honestly, and yet we are counted as perfect by our loving Heavenly Father because we trust in Jesus Christ, His Son, our perfect sacrifice on the cross. Oh friend, today could be the day that God remembers you. Today could be the day that you call on Christ as your Savior. The Lord in His kindness and love has sent His only Son to live a life of perfect trust, perfectly sanctified life, full obedience to the Heavenly Father. And He died on the cross specifically as a substitute for all of us who had turned from our sins and trusted Him.

And He calls you to do that today. God raised Him from the dead. He accepted the sacrifice of His Son. He presents him to us now, to you, calling you to turn and to trust in him. Friend, do that today.

Let this be the day that God remembers you.

Whoever you are here today, take up hope in this thought that in the literal flood of God's righteous judgment of his unrighteous world, he remembered Noah. What may have appeared only as a bobbing dark speck on a blue watery world did not escape the attention of the God who had made favorable promises to Noah and his family. The great God who made and ruled the world is pure and holy, it's true, but He is also merciful. And so we read here in the midst of this story of prevailing waters, But God remembered Noah. So whatever your distress is today, whatever the circumstances that have flooded your life, I pray that you will hear the hope that there is here for all who will enter the safety of the ark that Christ presents for all those who hope to be preserved through God's coming judgment of us and our world through Christ.

All the activity in the rest of this chapter turns on this internal action of God in his own self, of being disposed to love and care for Noah, of remembering Noah as he does all of his own. We should move on from God's will to God's way to deliver Noah. And here we see that God not only had the desire to save, but that God is fully able to save. He is all powerful. Look at that passage again, beginning at the end of verse 1: and God made a wind blow over the earth and the waters subsided.

The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed. The rain from the heavens was restrained and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated. And in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month.

In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth.

So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.

In the 601st year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off of the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out. So if you look at this passage, verses 1 to 5, you see all of God's activity. So as He had done at the first creation, so here God's wind made the waters subside. Their sources above and below the earth were closed and restrained.

So we read, the waters receded here continually. For five months the waters abated until they were so lowered that the ark stopped floating and it rested on solid ground. And for two and a half more months, God's work of pushing the waters back down continued until we see in the second half of this section, Noah becoming active in opening a window and sending out some birds as scouts. And then down in verse 13, removing the covering and seeing with his own eyes the ground, that it was dry. It's all God's activity there in 1:1-5 and then we see Noah beginning to respond.

Beloved, God controls everything that He has made, doesn't He? There is nothing that He's made that overmasters Him. Everything He's made, He continues to be the Lord and Master of. Not even the greatest of the elements of this world's power we see are beyond His control. Remember in Mark chapter 4 when Jesus was in the boat on the Sea of Galilee with His disciples and the windstorm and they were threatening, and Jesus' disciples got very worried.

They woke up Jesus and what did Jesus do? Well we read He rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace, be still.' and the wind ceased and there was a great calm and they were filled with great fear and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?' this was one of the greatest signs to the disciples that a human identity alone was insufficient. To explain who Jesus really is. Control over the weather like that was a sign of God's activity, of God's authority. So here we see God controlled the winds and the waves.

Even the fact that we read here in verse 4 of the ark coming to rest on mountains has its own kind of silent eloquence about it, doesn't it, if you think about it? The ark, this gigantic construction resting up on a mountain. Friend, how strange is that? Noah wouldn't have built the ark up in the mountains. We assume he built the ark down on the plains of Mesopotamia somewhere, maybe not too far from where his descendant Abram would later be called to follow the Lord.

But here, after years and decades of construction down on the plains, After less than a year of the flood, this gigantic crate, this stupendous construction of wood and tar, would rest perhaps thousands of feet up the side of a mountain. What an odd place to see an ark. A bit like if you're walking along and you see on a fence post a turtle on top of it. Well, how did he get up there? I mean, there's clearly some back story.

Turtle doesn't climb up a fence post. Well, so, friend, that ark, for generations after Noah, I assume, arrested there as a kind of testimony of the titanic event that had taken place in the flood as generation after generation looked and saw. No wonder so many ancient cultures have echoes of this story in their own myths with all kinds of details about a man, about a large boat, about a flood, even about various birds being sent out. Because in the human memory, there's stuck back there the echoes of this event.

So that ark was put there by the floods that were on the earth. It's a striking sight. But there are other striking sights. I might not initially strike you as a surprising sight, not at least like a great wooden ark on a mountainside.

But if you were to have known me at an earlier point in my life, then I think you see me standing here in a Christian pulpit advocating following Jesus Christ would be a striking sight. It would be unlikely that that person would end up there doing that. And as you get to know other people in this congregation, you'll find that there are other stories like that too. People that you would not have thought would end up there doing that and following Jesus Christ.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, says the psalmist in Psalm 104:5. He set the earth on its foundations so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment. The waters stood above the mountains. And then, as the psalmist kept recounting God's action in reversing this terrible flood, the next verse in Psalm 104:7, At your rebuke they fled, and the sound of your thunder they took to flight.

The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass so that they might not again cover the earth. And all this time, as God exercised His great power, Noah watched and waited. He opened a window we see in verse 6, which he dared not do during the storm. From there he sent forth a raven and then a dove.

The carnivorous raven seemed to find food and so didn't return, but the dove found none and so did. We read in verse 9 that Noah put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. I mentioned yesterday to Mike McKinley, former member of staff here, pastor of Sterling Park Baptist Church that I was preaching on this passage of Genesis 8, and Mike, in a pretty typical response, texted back, Hmm, how are you going to preach church membership out of that?

I responded with verse 9, Noah extended the right hand of fellowship to the dove and so brought the dove into the ark of the church.

Back to the serious point.

Noah in these months is waiting.

And sometimes that sounds like not much. But brothers and sisters, it takes real faith to wait.

Waiting is not passive. Waiting like this is active. And here Noah waits in verse 10 and in verse 12 as the waters subside from the earth. This was a man who had spent spent years, maybe decades, building the ark. He had been preaching righteousness to hardened crowds.

They refused to listen to God's call through him to repent. He was a man whose faith had long led him into the strengths of waiting. He was accustomed to his desires not being immediately met. And yet he continued to follow the Lord. So even here, He is waiting in faith on God and His timing.

Oh, brother, sister, believer, I wonder what you're waiting for this morning. I wonder what's holding on in your life, what trial of faith you're enduring, what disappointed hopes you're continuing to wait through even faithfully by your coming here this morning.

What helps you to know that this time, in this time of your life, that God is faithful, that He will make a way for you.

You know that your faith is built by knowing what God has promised.

So the Lord Jesus has promised so many things. He's promised to save all of His own, to prepare a place for us, to return. To bring us to Himself. He's pledged to pray for us, to judge the world with righteousness, to finally bring us home to Himself forever in His presence. And He is able to do all this and more, and He will do it for all of His own.

My non-Christian friend, I promise that your life is not so far off from God. That it is beyond his ability to save you still. If you've come to church today thinking that you're sort of genuflecting to God in a distant act of respect, but that there is no hope for you of ever having the kind of closeness and relation with God that you once thought you had, or that you see others have, or that you long to have, Your doubts are misleading you. They're lying about what God is like. There's no one who sits in a Christian church who deserves to be there on their own.

We're here only because of what God has done in Christ, and His blood is not weakened by your sin. He's not loved us less in our sins. He's loved us as we are. Believe him. As Noah observed God's actions, they no doubt gave him hope.

They began to show to him God's deliverance coming. He could see parts of it as those mountaintops began to appear. That must have excited him. All of a sudden to see what he thought he could feel that there was a receding of the waters. They would have looked strange at first, surprising, thrilling.

They would fill them with hope that the waters were continuing to decrease and recede and that the earth would finally have dry land on it again.

Friends, God not only has the will to save, He has the power. He has the ability. He controls all that He has made. We can always rely on Him.

But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything. That's not the conclusion we draw from that. And that brings us to our third point. We've seen that God's will is to save or deliver His own, in verse 1, and God's way to save or deliver, there in verses 1 to 14. Now we see God's Word come to His people.

He is our Lord. And so when He speaks, we obey.

Look there in verses 15 to 19, verses 15 to 19. Then God said to Noah, Go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. So Noah went out. And his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him.

Every beast, every creeping thing and every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark. The God who has a will to save and a way to save also uses His word. He speaks. The last time Moses records that Noah heard God speaking was a year earlier, if you look back up in chapter 7 verse 1. When the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark.

Now for the first time we read of since then, we read of here in chapter 8 verse 15, Then God said to Noah, Go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. God calls Noah out of the ark that he had called him into a year before. So there's a good example for you of God's purpose is not changing even if His specific instructions do. God's purpose had not changed. He was going to deliver Noah.

But sometime, in order to deliver Noah, that meant going into the ark. And sometime, to deliver Noah, that meant coming out of the ark. Friends, we have to look at God's Word. We need to understand the times. We need to heed God's Word for our own situation, just like Noah and his family did here.

Study, my friends, to know God's Word. To know when to particularly apply this part here and that part there. Listen to the teaching of a faithful church and to the Christian brothers and sisters around you who know and love God and His Word and who know and love you. And so God repeated the instructions that He had given to His creation back in the fifth day of creation in Genesis 1:22, calling the creatures to multiply. Here Noah becomes a kind of second Adam in the midst of an almost newly created world.

Friends, you and I would not know God's will if He didn't speak to us, if He didn't reveal it. We need to understand His truth about Him because we don't naturally know it. It's not inherent to us. For that matter, we can't even naturally know ourselves as we need to without knowing God. Have you seen that in your own life?

The more you come to know God, the more you come to understand yourself. On the other hand, the more you come to see what's going on in you, the more you're pushed to understand God and to see what he's like. John Calvin actually begins his instruction to young Christians, the Institutes, with this very point. Calvin wrote, Our wisdom insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom consists almost entirely of two parts. The knowledge of God and of ourselves.

But as these are connected together by many ties, it's not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. It is plain that no man can arrive at the true knowledge of himself without having first contemplated the divine character and then descended to the consideration of his own. For such is the native pride of us all, we invariably esteem ourselves righteous, innocent, wise and holy. 'till we are convinced by clear proofs of our unrighteousness, wickedness, folly, and impurity. But we are never thus convinced while we confine our attention to ourselves and regard not the Lord who is the only standard by which this judgment ought to be formed.

Friends, that's why you so often notice when someone becomes a Christian, Whether they're at 14 or 40, they become more mature as a person. Not that all Christians are more mature than all non-Christians. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that relative to what that individual is when they're not a Christian, they become more mature when they become a Christian. Because all of a sudden we now have the right standard to judge ourselves by.

We as it were become sort of morally visible to ourselves in a way we never were before we knew the truth about the Lord and what He made us to be like. But God hasn't left us alone to guess at who He is and what we need, like the pagan nations that sacrificed the young on the altars of their dimly known demon gods, hoping to placate them and so bring prosperity to their people. No, no, the true God has revealed Himself. He has spoken. He gave Moses this very book of Genesis to instruct the people as they prepared to go into the land that He had promised to give them.

And it's also given for our instruction to profit us in teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness. Noah said, Apart from an evil day, by hearing and heeding God's Word was a good example for those ancient Israelites as they prepared to go in among new pagan nations. And Noah is a good example for us in Hebrews 11:7 as an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. Why would Noah be said to be a man of faith? Because faith is hearing with the ears and believing God when He tells us something that we cannot yet see with our eyes.

Noah here in this very passage is an example of this, to us, to you today. So God speaks and Noah hears and heeded. He walked with God. As Moses put it back in chapter 6, verse 9. And God then begins again a creation of humanity, sort of take two, a fresh start.

Through Noah's long obedience of constructing an ark for many years, of obeying all of God's commands in chapter 6 and finally going into the ark and taking his family with him back in chapter 7, now Now God speaks to Noah again, calling him out of the ark. And Noah, once again, in faith and trust in God, he obeys. You see this pattern laid down for us in Noah. Faith shows itself in the path we choose to walk. No, neither you nor I walk it perfectly, but we will walk it really.

And thus you will see again and again in a true follower of Jesus what we go and what we do. And that basically is where God would have us go and what God would have us do. That's part of what it means to be his. So what about you this morning, my believing friend? Are you having trouble being patient?

Welcome to what it means to be a Christian in the fallen world. There's nothing we can do here at this church that will make you grow beyond the need for patience. That's simply not a spiritual gift given in this life.

We can grow in patience, but until the Lord returns or calls us home, we'll still have circumstances that means we need patience. Who knows what will happen this year to your friends at school or your work, your income, your family, your health? To you, no one knows. We don't know the specifics of that. No, this world is full of uncertainties, but on the other hand, that's the way God has laid out what it means to be alive.

Step after step, we follow His instructions. Step after step, we then get experiences of His faithfulness, renewed every day as He provides for us. Teenagers, for you especially, Do you see how God can use your parents and trusting someone who knows you more than you know yourself and loves you more than you know how to love maybe at this point? How he can do that in order to prepare you to relate to God? That's why you should be reading God's Word as a young person.

Just resolve to read 1 Peter this week. So if you're a teenager here, I'm just exhorting you. Read 1 Peter this week. It's not very long. You can do it this afternoon if you want to.

But read 1 Peter. Or pick just one day this week, any day, and decide to chart how much time you spend on your phone, whatever you're doing on it, and the same day how much time you spend reading God's Word. And compare the two. And see which you spend more time on. For that matter, parents, you might want to pick up the same practice.

Just see it and see if spending more time reading God's Word might not help you to become wiser than spending the same amount of time doing whatever you would do on your phone. And then maybe your twelfth year or your fourteenth year or your nineteenth year would be a better year because you'd be living with more of the wisdom that God has available for you. Consider doing that. One day this week, Noah is great. He heard the voice of God.

But friends, we have a real advantage over Noah because not only do we have fewer pets to care for, but we have, I'm sure he got, again, a number of emails from you, I'm sure he got supernatural help in the ordering of the animals in the ark. There's just no way around it otherwise.

But we have many advantages over Noah, but the greatest advantage we have is that God has given us his Spirit, and that he has given us his Word. We have God's Word written, translated, available for us to read whenever we want to. Friends, if there's anyone here who doesn't have a copy of God's Word that they can read, just come find me or any of the pastors at the doors on the way out in a few moments, and we'll give you one that you can have and keep this very morning. So this is what we mean to do as Christians in our local churches. We mean to study God's Word like we are right now.

We mean to help each other be directed by God and His Word. We mean to help each other avoid false teachers of God's Word who are saying things that are not true and embrace good and faithful ones. Pray that we do that well. God uses His Word to deliver His people, just like He spoke to Noah.

Well friends, we should conclude. On this St. Patrick's Day weekend, I just can't resist going to Patrick as an example of these lessons from Genesis 8. And the fact that I've just been to Ireland recently, it's on my mind. Ireland's fascinating place. Most depopulated country in Europe.

200 years ago, 8 million people, now 5 million people. Roman Catholic Church's situation there is much reduced because of decades of scandals in the clergy.

And yet there are little Baptist and Presbyterian churches growing all over the island. There with people who were brought up Roman Catholic, but are now hearing and believing the good news of Jesus Christ. And they are actually following in the path of that most famous of people associated with Ireland, Patrick. Patrick's own life was itself a demonstration of God's power, of God's mercy, of God's Word being heard and obeyed.

Three things we've thought of with Noah. We see all of these things in Patrick's life. And because today is St. Patrick's Day, and you might have an opportunity later to talk to someone and use this as a means of sharing what you were learning about Noah, I share with you about Patrick here at the very end of the message. You can know Patrick's life in basically four chapters. Number one, he was born around the year 390, so Augustine is writing his books in Northern Africa at the time.

He's born in the year 390 in Northern England in a Christian family. That's his first chapter. He's there the first 16 years of his life. Chapter 2, at age 16, he is captured by Irish pirates. Irish pirates in the fifth century were fierce and feared.

And these Irish pirates took Patrick as a slave, and they enslaved him for six years over in Ireland. But it's during those six years that he actually is converted and becomes a Christian.

In his own words, he says, More and more the love of God increased in my sense of awe before God. Faith grew and my spirit was moved. I was sixteen years old and knew not the true God. But in that strange land, the Lord opened my unbelieving eyes and although late, I called my sins to mind and was converted with my whole heart to the Lord my God. So he spends his six years as a slave in Ireland as a brand new Christian in a pagan land.

There were no Christians in Ireland at the time. Well at 22, chapter 3 begins. He's able to find a way back to England, back home. So he escapes and goes back home. And chapter 3 is from 22 to 40.

He becomes a Christian pastor. And he pastors Christians there in the north of England. But as he does, he kept thinking about the spiritual state of those who had captured him. And he became burdened for the Irish, a completely pagan land. No Christian witness.

So that brings about the fourth and final chapter in Patrick's life. At around the age 42, he gets 12 companions to go with him, and they go to Ireland, and they spend the next several decades evangelizing Ireland, facing fierce opposition from hostile chieftains and druids. But friends, from everything we can tell, they're in the early fifth century, they see thousands of people come to Christ. And when you read Patrick's Confessions, you're going to hear the gospel that he shares. Sounds very much like the gospel that we share here every Sunday.

He seemed to be a believer in Jesus Christ. And he, after seeing thousands come to Christ, he then died in Ireland on March 17th, this day, which is why it's called his day in the year about 460.

Patrick's life is simply one of a countless host of people all following in the train of Noah and his family, of people who followed the Lord our God that He had set His love upon. God has moved in an all-powerful way to convert and to save and to direct us by His Word. That's how Noah went from his floating coffin to stepping out into a new-made world. That's how Patrick was liberated spiritually before he was liberated physically.

That's how God won his heart to go back and share the Gospel with his Irish captors. In Patrick's own words, that's why I cannot be silent, nor would it be good to do so, about such great blessings and such a gift that the Lord so kindly bestowed in the land of my captivity. This is how we can repay such blessings when our lives change and we come to know God, to praise and bear witness of his great wonders before every nation under heaven.

So, dear friends, what about you? What arc are you in? What flood have you endured? What captivity do you find yourself in today? Don't despair.

Trust God's good will. Trust His powerful ways. Be directed by His true Word. He is merciful. He is all powerful.

He has spoken and provided for our greatest need. Amen. Let's pray together.

Lord God, we pray that yout would cause each one of us to hear in our hearts this word of hope that there is in Jesus Christ. And so be heartened, be enlivened. Lord, be brought to more and more fully trust in youn with each day and each hour youe give us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.