SCRIPTURE: GENESIS 8
IMPORTANT VERSE:
“The Lord said in his heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21)
THE FLOOD RECEDES (vs. 1-22)
But God remembered Noah 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 hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.
After forty days Noah opened the 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 no place to set its feet because there was water all over 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 the water had receded from the earth. 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 six hundred and first year, 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 twenty-seventh 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 – they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.
So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the grou8nd and all the birds – everything that moves on the earth – come out of the ark, one kind after another.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of 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 man, even though every inclination of his 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.”
THOUGHTS:
Occasionally Noah would send a bird out to test the earth and see if it was dry. But Noah did not get out of the boat until God told him to. He was waiting for God’s timing. God knew that even though the water was gone, the earth was not dry enough for Noah and his family to venture out. Noah had great patience to be spending an entire year inside the boat. Like Noah, we must trust God to give us patience during those difficult times when we must wait.
The Lord has promised never again to destroy everything on earth until the day of judgment. This shows God’s love and patience towards mankind. But when judgment day comes, He will destroy evil forever.