And now please turn with me in God's word to Genesis chapter eight this morning. Genesis chapter eight. This eighth chapter of the book of Genesis is largely the waiting part of Noah's story. The storm has passed. Noah finds himself on the ark for months, waiting for the waters of the flood to recede so that he can get off the ark and get back to living. It's not the most exciting part of Noah's story, the waiting part. It's the part that we suspect that would be written out of the script. by a Hollywood producer, because audiences these days, if there's one thing they won't stand for, it's being bored. But you'll notice here that Moses, who's writing this count, actually dwells upon the waiting part. 19 verses committed to this phase of Noah's story. And the reason seems to be because when Moses thinks of his audience, that is, the Israelites, The waiting part is actually an important part and he wants them to think about that. He wants them to hear, he wants God's people to hear in this account that even Noah was made to wait upon God and he wants them to see in Noah's story what God was doing while his servant was waiting. And he wants them to learn from Noah how to wait patiently on the Lord and see why Noah was glad that he did. So, if you find yourself this morning waiting upon God, and likely you do, then there's a good chance that this sermon, something in it, will speak to you. that God will speak to you this morning through his word to strengthen you and encourage you as you find yourself waiting upon him. Please stand now for the reading of God's word. Let us pray. Lord, we know that whatever things were written before were written for our learning. that we, through the patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope. And so, Lord, be pleased this day to give us hope as we now prepare to receive your word and faith. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So our sermon text today is Genesis chapter 8, verses 1 through 19. Listen now to the word of God. Then God remembered Noah and every living thing and all the animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. And the waters receded continually from the earth. At the end of the 150 days, the waters decreased. Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the 17th day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the 10th month. And the 10th month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. So it came to pass at the end of 40 days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth. He also sent out from himself a dove to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground. But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and drew her into the ark to himself. And he waited yet another seven days, and again he sent the dove out from the ark. Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth, and no one knew that the waters had receded from the earth. So he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, which did not return again to him anymore. And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year and the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed, the surface of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God spoke to Noah, saying, Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and cattle, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may abound on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. And so Noah went out, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him. Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever creeps on the ground, according to their families, went out of the ark." This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. When I was a kid, every November, my grandmother would send us a calendar for counting down the days of Christmas. Some of you may have seen some of these calendars. It was a piece of cardstock, and it was a magical Christmas scene printed on it, and there was glitter. There was always glitter. And there were little flaps cut into it that were like little doors. And so there was one door for every day of December leading up until Christmas Day. And so we got this calendar, we would post it on the refrigerator, and then beginning December 1st, get up in the morning and go down and find the door marked December 1st, and we would open it up. And it would always be some little Christmassy picture behind there, like a pie, or a cardinal, or mistletoe, or something. And that was it. And then we would do it again on December 2nd and all the way until Christmas Day. There were always 24 days. That never changed. 24 doors. And on December the 25th, Christmas Day, Santa always came. We were never disappointed. But as you can imagine, this made December an excruciatingly long month, which really tested my patience. And maybe this countdown made things worse. But I remember those calendars very fondly. It's a piece of my grandmother's love for us. And I would not have rather put Christmas out of my mind to make time go faster. And I suspect that this exercise in waiting was probably good for me. Anyone can be made to wait. It's another thing to wait well. We're not something that we all have to learn. We have to learn to wait respectfully of those who are worthy of our respect. Sometimes these are the very people who are making us wait. And we have to carry on in our duties while we wait. And we have to keep a positive attitude, not be sulking and bitter because things are not happening fast enough for us, but remain positive and excited for that thing for which we are waiting. And as Christians, you know, we wait on the Lord. And waiting on the Lord is not just something that we do. It's who we are. We are the people who wait on the Lord. And this is a big emphasis in scripture. There's lots of verses that remind us of this. And I'm actually gonna read to you quite a few of these, because they're great. And each one says something a little bit different about this subject of waiting on the Lord. I think you'll hear that. Psalm 27, 14. It says, wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. Psalm 33, 20. It says, our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in him because we have trusted in his holy name. Psalm 37.7 says, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret, it only causes harm. Psalm 37, four says, wait on the Lord and keep his way and he shall exalt you to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you shall see it. Psalm 62, five says, my soul waits silently for God alone for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense, I shall not be moved. And God is my salvation and my glory. The rock of my strength and my refuge is in God. Psalm 135, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits. And in his word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning. Yes, more than those who watch for the morning. Isaiah 40, 31. Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Lamentation 325. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. And finally, Hosea 12.6, so you by the help of your God return, observe mercy and justice, and wait on your God continually. So you see why Moses didn't skip the waiting part. The waiting part is an important part of the story. It's an important part of Noah's story, and it's an important part of our story too. So let's see what this passage has to teach us about waiting on the Lord. The first thing we read in verse 1 is it says there that God remembered Noah. That's how the chapter opens. Then God remembered Noah. And scholars tell us that the account of Noah and the flood has what they call a chiastic structure. So it's sort of like a triangle, like an equilateral triangle. So the first half of this account, the old world passes away as the waters rise. And then right at the middle, the waters then begin to recede in the second half as the new world appears. And what they say is that Genesis 8.1, this first verse in chapter 8, is the pinnacle of the triangle. This is precisely the middle point in the narrative. And therefore, according to the logic of a chiastic structure, Genesis 8.1 is actually the most important point in the whole passage. The most important thing here is not that Noah was a righteous man and was favored by God and then he built an ark and entered into it. And it's not that Noah waited on the Lord and sent out the birds and eventually got off the ark. The most important thing in the passage is that God remembered Noah. And that God remembered Noah is saying something in particular about God's covenant faithfulness. So it's not just like, oh, God remembered Noah. He remembered Noah. He wasn't going to forget Noah because he'd made a covenant with Noah. God's faithfulness in this respect, remembering his people, is something that's repeated again and again throughout the Pentateuch. So if you read later the accounts of the patriarchs, you'll read that the Lord remembered Abraham and remembered Isaac and remembered Jacob. And then if you read on into Exodus, when the Israelites cry out to the Lord, he remembers his covenant with their fathers and moves to deliver them from Pharaoh. So God does this. He remembers his people. And so you see here, as you look at verse 1, this fact that God remembered Noah is not in doubt. That's established from the very beginning. It's not in doubt as this period of waiting begins for Noah. So the story is not about whether God will remember Noah or not. The story now is about whether Noah will trust that God has remembered him while he's being made to wait upon the Lord. So if you are waiting for the Lord right now, Christians, do not doubt that he has remembered you. Do not doubt that he has remembered you. Even when you're being made to wait a long time, even when you see that God has business in the world and there's a lot going on and it might seem that his mind could certainly be occupied elsewhere, and that he should overlook you. When you look around you, and you see that we Christians are few, and the sound of our feeble cry is being drowned out by the deafening den of everything that's going on out there, it doesn't matter. The Lord remembers his people, and he remembers you. It's not just what he does, that's who he is. The God-remembered Noah is then, in verses 1-5, seen in a series of three events that I want to point out. Where do we see that the Lord remembered Noah? First, we see it in that a wind blows, in verse 1. God made a wind pass over the earth. That's the first thing that happens after we're told. that the Lord remembered Noah. The Hebrew here is Ruha, which can mean wind or it can also mean spirit. So here it's definitely wind. And then secondly, as the wind blows, we see that God remembers Noah and that the waters begin to recede. Verse three, the waters recede continually from the earth. That word recede in the Hebrew means they turn back or even they retreated. And then thirdly, as the waters recede, in verse 5, the land appears. The wind blows, the waters retreat, and that's when the land appears. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. So those are the three events. And these three events are, I want you to appreciate, repeated at critical points in the Pentateuch. So if we go back to Genesis chapter 1 in the creation account, this was what we saw on the third day of creation. the spirit, the Ruach, hovers over the waters of the deep as the chapter 1 opens. God then gives a command on the third day and the waters begin to retreat and draw back and gather into seas and that's when the dry land appears which is just bursting with fruit to sustain the life of God's creatures. So we see the same things, three things in Genesis 1 and then later in Exodus 14 At the Red Sea crossing, when the Israelites' backs are against the wall and Pharaoh's army is bearing down upon them, we read that God causes again a strong east wind, Ruach, to blow. And as that wind blows, the waters of the Red Sea are parted before Moses and the Israelites, revealing what? Dry land. And this is the path for God's people to take to freedom and the promised land of milk and honey. It's the same three events. And so as these three events are happening now here in Noah's story, what Moses is doing is he's showing his audience, that is God's people, what God does when he remembers them. And what does he do? delivers them. The Lord is here delivering his people. He's delivering Noah and those on the ark from the wickedness of the old world that has oppressed them. And not only is he delivering them, but he's also creating something new. The Lord is doing a work of new creation here, creating a new world for Noah and those with him on the ark. So both the ideas of deliverance and new creation are seen in these three events. And so as Christians, while we find ourselves waiting upon the Lord, we should be assured as a matter of faith that God is doing great things in the world while we wait, doing great things for Christ and his church. The wind blowing in our world right now under the new covenant. Yes, the Holy Spirit has been poured out at Pentecost and is out in the world still working. Are the waters retreating before the Holy Spirit as the gospel is preached? Yes, the kingdom of darkness is losing its grip upon God's elect and they're being brought out of that darkness and into the kingdom of the Son of God's love. But in this dry land, a new world, a new creation is appearing out of the old one. wherever Christ is preached. As Paul reminded the Colossians in chapter one, verse six, he said to them, the word of the truth of the gospel, which has now gone out into all the world, is bringing forth fruit. As it also was among you, since you heard and knew the grace of God in truth. So even in times when you can't maybe appreciate that this is happening in the world, it is happening in the world under the new covenant. God has not forgotten his covenant with his son, his righteous one, or has he forgotten the lives of those who are in Christ throughout the world? But still, Noah has to wait on God. So let's look at Noah's waiting. Two things to notice about Noah's waiting here in verses 6 through 14. It says specifically in verses 10 and 12 that Noah waited, but obviously he's waiting throughout this account. Two things to note. First, these months of waiting were a trial of Noah's faith, whether he trusted the Lord or not. It was a trial. In the Bible, the number 40 is often associated with trials. such as the trial of Jesus Christ in the wilderness after 40 days of fasting. So Moses here notes in verse 6 concerning Noah, so it came to pass at the end of 40 days. So this is the beginning of Noah's trial. Remember that in the book of Exodus, as Moses' readers would have understood, the first generation of Israel had faced and failed a similar trial. when Moses went up on Mount Sinai to God. Exodus 24, 18 tells us that Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. In Exodus 32, 1, we read that when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down to the mountain, they got impatient. The people gathered together to Aaron and said to him, come make us gods that shall go before us. And then Exodus 32, 7, the Lord says to Moses, get down for your people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves by idolatry. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded cast. So part of the story there is the story of the patient. These are like it said earlier at the foot of Mount Sinai that they trusted in the Lord as their God. But when they were made to wait for Moses, God's trial of their sincerity raised questions about their profession of faith. So Moses is being tried here, his faith is being tried. Secondly, notice that Noah receives no new word from the Lord during this trial of his faith. The only word that Noah had was the word that God gave him, his covenant promise to Noah that was spoken before the building and entering the ark. Go back to Genesis 6, 13, the Lord says, I will destroy them, the wicked, with the earth, verse 18, but I will establish my covenant with you. Once Noah gets on the ark, there are no new words of instruction that come from the Lord to Noah, nor are there new words, additional words of encouragement for months while Noah is made to weep for the Lord on the ark. So the word of God's covenant promise to Noah spoken earlier was sufficient for him. It's sufficient to see him through this entire journey from the old world to the new one. And so Noah, as a man of faith, was expected to cling to that promise, to believe it to be good, throughout the entire ordeal of the ark, including this excruciatingly long wait. And God tries your faith this way as well. When you're made to wait upon the Lord, don't expect a new word from God, as if you needed that. You don't need that. You have a sufficient word from God in the instructions and in the promises of the Bible. And that's what you are to cling to in faith. And that will carry you through to the end, if you have the faith to believe it. Now, three things here to appreciate then about the patience of Noah as he undergoes this trial, clinging to God's promises, his covenant promises. Three things to appreciate about the patience of Noah. First, as important as anything is what Noah did not do. What he did not do. He didn't do what the Israelites did in the first generation at Mount Sinai. That is, he didn't turn aside to other gods. We don't know what's happened to this god who put me on this ark. But now I've got to look to other gods for help. And Noah didn't do what Abraham did when Abraham took Hagar as his wife. That is, he didn't get Antioch in substitute God's plan with some scheme of his own. And so sometimes appreciate that the faithful thing for a Christian to do when waiting is to do nothing. To not do what you feel the urge to do. Don't fidget, don't get anxious, don't make a break for it, just be still. And that's what the Bible says sometimes. That's sometimes how this is phrased. Psalm 4610, be still and know that I am God. And then secondly, what Noah does do is he obeys God throughout this ordeal. And so far as God had told him things to do, he does it. Building the ark, Genesis 6.22, thus Noah did according to all that God commanded him, so he did. On entering the ark, Genesis 7.5, and Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. So what God gave him to do, he did. Obediently, that's important. But beyond what God had given him to do, Noah discerned that he just had to wait patiently on the Lord. And so this is what the trial of your faith will look like as well when God makes you wait upon Him. And understand that in this way, God is not only testing your faith, but He's actually teaching you to be patient as a believer. This is an exercise in patience. and an exercise by which God's spirit works in you the valuable virtue of Christian patience. The apostles appreciated this, taught this. Paul in Romans 5.3 says, we glory in tribulations also knowing that tribulation worketh patience and patience experience and experience hope. So by the experience of being made to wait, made to be patient, and then seeing your hopes realized, you take that experience with you into the next trial. You'll find that you're able to be patient, to be still even longer the next time. And then James 1.2, James says, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. And he says, but let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Do you gain something that you need by such trials? And then the third thing to appreciate about Noah's patience is this. While Noah is waiting and doing what God has told him to do, he remains eager. and eagerly looks for the fulfillment of what God has promised to him and his family. And this is the sending out of the birds. We're told that when the 40 days are over, Noah presumably no longer hears rain outside, decides to poke his head out the window of the ark. You know, the gopher poking his head out of his hole when the storm has passed. And at first, as Noah looks out, he just sees nothing but water. And the receding of the water is slow enough that he can't see that. It's not discernible to his eyes. So he just sees a world flooded with water. That's all he can see. And so, but Noah is eager for some kind of encouragement, some kind of sign that as he believed the Lord had not forgotten him, that it wouldn't be too much longer now before he'd be able to get off this boat. So Noah periodically, constantly, but he periodically sends birds out of the ark as a way of seeking some encouraging sign that God had remembered him and his family. So this is what we read in verse 7 through 12. So first he sends the the raven out, and as a messenger, the raven is inconclusive. Raven flies out over the waters, doesn't sound like he ever comes back. Did he find land? Did he die? It's hard to say. So perhaps this means that the encouragement that God's people should be seeking doesn't come by means of an unclean bird, as the raven was. So then there's the dove, a clean bird. I redid the three flights of the dove. So the first flight, the dove is sent out, finds nothing but water, returns to Noah. So the answer is not yet, but we'll try again later. So that's a little bit of encouragement. And the second flight is the beautiful one. For then the dog goes out, same dog, seven days later, and he returns to Noah with a freshly plucked olive leaf in her mouth. So Noah can tell from this leaf, it's just a leaf, that's it. But he can tell from it, this is not from some tree that went down in the flood. This is a new tree. This is part of the new world. He can't see the land yet. He can't see anything. All he can see is this leaf. But this is a piece of the new world. And that and that alone is a huge encouragement to Noah. He can't eat this thing. He can't get out on it like a raft. sail away. It's a really encouraging sign and I wonder sometimes if we don't do something like this when we send out missionaries into the world and we eagerly wait for for some word from them of gospel fruit out there. However small, it's always an encouragement to us as believers that yes, the spirit is still at work in the world. Yes, the hostile waters still retreat before Christ. And yes, the work of the creator's new creation is still appearing little by little. And then the third flight of the dove, Noah sends him out and he doesn't come back. And because of the second flight, he knows what that means, which is that the dove has found a better resting place than the ark. And so now it's just a matter of time that Noah is going to join his feathered friend. So as Christians, we all are waiting like Noah is waiting. We're not waiting for Christmas Day to come. We're waiting for Christ himself to come. And there's a day appointed. when he will come. Great things are promised on that day. Jesus will come like a great deliverer, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Jesus will come as the creator, bring with him a new heavens and a new earth, where peace and righteousness will be the norm. The precise day is only known to God, does not reveal that to us. And so it's like every new day we get up in the morning and there's another another door. to open. Another countdown on the calendar countdown on the refrigerator. And that door says, not today, but you're one day closer. And as we go through this, we're not to put Christ's return out of our minds and try to make the time go faster. But we are to be eagerly looking for it. The Bible is real clear about that. If we go out One day, we don't see anything encouraging, we go back, then we come back another day. We look for encouragement then. And if we do look and we do see something that encourages us, then we're to receive it and we're to relish it and all that it means. Just like the virgins in Christ's parable, right? Our lamps trend expectantly through the long night of our vigils. You know, but wouldn't time pass faster if you just went to sleep? You can't sleep, because you're so excited that he might come any moment. And like the Christians to whom Peter wrote, you're to remain excited. He says in 1 Peter 1.8, though now you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. And the patience of our faith, the saints will be rewarded, as Noah's was. Verses 15 through 19. Then finally, verse 15, God speaks again to Noah, instructs his servant, announces him the time has come for all living things on the ark to step out now into the new world which is ready, which the Lord has prepared for them. Verse 17, then God, we hear, blesses the creatures on the ark with the blessing of abundant, fruitful lives. It's the recent statement of the blessing of Adam upon this second Adam and those lives that he's brought with him through the storm. And so it happens for Noah, just as God had promised him, verse 18. So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird and whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark. So at some point in the story of believers, promise becomes fulfillment. What you can't see but hoped for because God told you it was coming, it comes, and you see it at last. On those hopes that God continually encouraged in your heart that sustained you, give way to the realities, and that's your reward. There's a reward for patience in Noah's story, and there will be a reward for patience in ours as well. So in conclusion, again, I think it's a good point. That waiting on the Lord is not just something that we do, it's who we are. This is who we are. And we learn from scripture that when we are not only made to wait on the Lord, but wait on him well. It glorifies him. It's an opportunity to glorify the Lord. When we praise God in worship, that glorifies Him. When we obediently serve God by our works, that glorifies Him. But also, when we patiently and excitedly wait on God in our lives, that too glorifies Him. So we have the example of the God-glorifying patience of Abraham in Romans 4, 19. Paul looks back at the story of Abraham from the book of Genesis and says, of him not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead since he was about 100 years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb just reminds us of that part of the story of how long Abraham had to wait for the promised son. And the seeming impossibility He could come in the way God said he was going to come at this late stage. And yet Abraham, it says, did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief. Now, we know enough of Abraham's story to know he did waver. But he learned from it and it didn't define him, thank God. But he was strengthened in faith and gave glory to God, Paul says, being fully convinced that what the Lord had promised, he was also able to perform. And therefore, that faith was accounted to him for righteousness, particularly his faith in the promised son. So are you being made to wait upon the Lord? Of course you are. It's what we do. It's what God does to us. You're being made to wait of nothing else for the return of Jesus Christ. And so many Christian hopes remain unfulfilled until that day. And it is an excruciatingly long wait. We read in Revelation 22, 20, back in the first century, Jesus saying to John, surely I'm coming quickly. What does quickly mean to him? It's been a long time. Perhaps, meanwhile, you are also being made to wait upon the Lord for some other deliverance right now. You know what that is better than I do. Recognize that it is God who's making you wait. Can you submit to that? It's God who's trying your faith right now. Can you lean into that? and learn the lesson that the Lord is trying to teach you, to receive the gift that he's trying to give you in this. His Spirit, don't you know, is patiently working in you the Christian grace of patience, which is something of that patience that you see in Jesus himself on the cross. It's a patience which is built upon solid trust in the Lord your God, among other things that he has remembered you. This is an opportunity for you, Christian, to glorify your God by not only waiting, but waiting patiently upon him whom you know remembers you and refusing to abandon the hope that he has encouraged in you, clinging to your God's promises to you in Christ in the Bible. Meanwhile, doing what God has commanded you to do, his servant, in the meantime, and doing so with that alacrity of a child in the month of December, excitedly scanning the horizon for the coming of the Lord Jesus, your deliverer, knowing that he brings with him a new world for you when he comes. If you come to church one Sunday, I think it's interesting that these birds are sent out every seven days. If you come to church one Sunday, as you do Sunday after Sunday, and you don't find encouragement in what you hear, come back the next Sunday, you might. And one Sunday, instead of coming in here and finding me again, opening up this book to remind you again of God's promises to you, and that with Him one day is as a thousand days, and a thousand days is one day, one day you'll come and it'll be Christ Himself. And then, you shall receive your reward. Shall we pray?